Archive - December 2010

DEC

Compelling Online Presentations

23 DEC 2010 | Author Alex McLachlan

Many people want to make presentations available online as videos. But how to make them compelling?

One excellent idea is to animate them. See for example how the RSA has turned some of their events into 10 minute animated talks.

DEC

Project failure, unintended consequences and people

22 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile methodology | Author Anthony Flack |

2 Comments

Why do projects fail to run as successfully and logically as they should given all the time, effort and resources expended?

Project failure expressed as a financial or time related overrun, or plain simple non-delivery, will be a familiar story to many of us. An often quoted view is that 70% of all changes fail at implementation. Management Consultants utilise such facts to try and justify a better or alternative approach. If the 70% fact is scrutinised enough, some will describe the fact as a fallacy, as surely the change does not fail entirely? The change may not work as intended or put another way, may have other unintended consequences.

DEC

Project Initiation - An Agile Opportunity

22 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile adoption, project initiation, transition | Author John Wright

In an organisation that receives many requests for development projects to serve the business, an agile initiation can help the project office with the task of evaluating the projects and prioritising them based on different criteria, business criticality, business value, compliance, business resilience etc.

Projects are selected and given an initial budget for project initiation. This typically funds the detailed business case, definition of the system architecture, high-level design, requirements definition and initial resource and delivery plan.

DEC

Agile Infrastructure is Key

21 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile engineering, deployment, infrastructure, security | Author John Wright

In the excitement of understanding requirements, selecting stories for development, defining acceptance criteria, building some software, getting feedback from users and regular re-prioritisation its easy to put aside infrastructure and deployment constraints. Putting off these considerations can have an impact on your agility later in a project.

DEC

Does Agile Reduce Design?

21 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile engineering, design | Author James Yoxall

I often hear the complaint that Agile reduces the amount of design possible on a project. The typical scenario cited is that design work has had to be "cut short" because the developers are ready to play the story. I get the image of a nest full of baby birds clamouring for food.

The intent is quote the opposite: Agile should increase the amount of design, but decrease the amount that occurs up-front. This requires a fundamental mindset shift: design is not synonymous with up-front design.

DEC

Book Review: Switch: Practical Change Management by Dan and Chip Heath

17 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile business change, change, change management, fear of change | Author Alex McLachlan |

1 Comment

Switch: How to change things when change is hard

by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

In Switch, Chip and Dan Heath discuss the challenges of change and the need to engage with the emotions of invviduals affected. The clear message is that it is not enough to make the logical case for change, you have to engage with the emotional dislike or even fear of change.

DEC

Israel Gat appointed Director of Agile Practice at Cutter

13 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile governance, Israel Gat, lean | Author Jason Smith

It's good to see our friend Israel Gat has just been appointed as the Director of Agile Practice at the Cutter Consortium Israel is speaking at our Agile Enterprise Forum in March and will be discussing Agile Governance: how to link value to delivery. Israel has some fascinating insights on applying Agile and Lean techniques to the increasingly complex business world of social networking, cloud computing and mobile computing.

DEC

Intercontinental Collaboration Challenge!

13 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile approach, collaboration | Author Stan Wade |

1 Comment

Isn't it great the way agile techniques allow you to discuss issues with your team mates sitting next to you in the same war room. It's not so great when the war room spans several continents. It’s even harder when your team members speak several different mother tongues and they are still trying to get a basic grasp of agile concepts let alone project details.

DEC

Traditional contracts are doomed

10 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile adoption, agile governance, change, change management, contracts, Government, IndigoBlue Second Wednesdays, lean | Author John Wright |

9 Comments

I've been thinking for some time now that traditional "Supply of Goods" contracts make building a collaborative client/supplier relationship tough. The nature of the contract is to fix the requirements up front, agree delivery milestones and try to focus the team on delivering what has been defined up front.

DEC

No More Mega Government IT Projects

09 DEC 2010 | Posted in Government, large projects, overspend, procurement | Author Chris Gee

It seems as though the Government is at last starting to see some sense regarding the failings of IT projects in the public sector. There are some absolute horror stories of botched Government IT projects which have cost taxpayers more than an estimated £26bn.