In terms of scaling, we need to define the difference between Growth and Scaling.   Growth vs. Scaling   Growth The company adds new resources (capital, people, or technology), and its revenue increases as a result.   While mathematically, this makes sense, the reality is that it often creates more problems than it solves.   As an example, as a startup or small company grows, one of the early symptoms is that the team can no longer fit in a single room, and the founder/CEO can no longer manage everyone.   You need to start thinking about organisational ..read more

Some of you might have seen my post "Oops, I said the 'P' word...." where I talked about innovation processes. I was asked recently to be interviewed on the Process Pioneers podcast to talk more about innovation as a process, and here it is ..read more

We’re very pleased to announce that Technology Systems, a business and innovation consulting company, has joined the Atlassian Solution Partner Program as a Silver Partner. Atlassian Solution Partners provide consulting, sales and technical services to deliver and implement customer solutions on Atlassian products. More specifically, Silver Solution Partners are niche consulting companies that provide product knowledge and can offer administrative and implementation services. "After more than 15 years implementing and supporting tools within the Atlassian platform and addons from th ..read more

I've mentioned the practice of retrospectives in a previous blog about processes, but I think it's worth diving into some more detail, as it's something that you can do right now, without having to fully implement Agile or Scrum.  The time commitment from you and the team is very little: normally just 10-15 minutes. If the team is operating in regular sprints, then it's normally done at the end of each sprint (every 1-2 weeks). Or if not, can run at any time, but it should be done throughout the project rather than just at the end. And every time you run one, there will be specific action ..read more

In this environment, where work and the way we work has been turned upside down, we need to relook at where we can as individuals add value. I've been working as a gig worker/freelancer for a number of years now, and the recent events have certainly had an impact on my own business. My customers have done as what most other companies have done to batten down the hatches, firstly turning off the tap to any non-employees (me!) and then look at ways to reduce wages bill (through cuts to salary) and ultimately, making people redundant.  My normal 'gig' is working with companies that are deve ..read more

I often meet new people at events and get the usual question: So, what do you do?   After having answered this question quite literally hundreds of times, my response often is:   “I’m the ‘Scaleup Guy’, implementing processes and systems: the ‘boring stuff’, but it’s the ‘boring stuff’ that you’ve got to get right to be able to innovate, grow and scale effectively and sustainably.” — David Stokes   This response always seems to resonate strongly with them, especially if they have experienced first-hand being in an organisation that has been trying to grow without changing t ..read more

“[Agile] Project Delivery: The processes and systems required for an organisation to reliably plan, track [,adapt to change] and deliver value, whether for new product development, customer delivery or internal projects.” — David Stokes   Introduction One of the challenges many companies face is delivering projects on time (or, in some cases, not delivering the project at all), to budget, and adapting to changes as they occur, impacting the ability to deliver what is required.  A large portion of my career has been either as a project manager managing projects, establishing project m ..read more

Over the last 15 years, I have been working with companies helping them develop and bring products and services to market - you'll see a number of them listed in my LinkedIn profile. A big part of those engagements was developing fit-for-purpose processes and coaching the teams to build their experience and capability in using those processes - I wrote a blog on this recently (Oops, I said the "P" word....). These processes ranged from engineering practices, product development, sales, marketing, customer success, strategy, research, etc. Core to these processes is how the company operates, an ..read more

Unfortunately, the reality of business is that when revenue decreases, as it would in a recession, the cost base needs to reduce to maintain a level of profitability or cash flow. For a lot of organisations delivering products, their number one cost is people. But reducing headcount to save costs, it often means that the business loses the capacity or capability to deliver new products or improvements to existing products. This results in the cancellation/postponement of product development projects and/or the reduction of the size of those projects. And this can further reduce revenue, theref ..read more

We now know from part one why the development of a physical product is different to software. In part two we considered the three different time horizons. So now let’s discover which tools are required to support all this. Does Jira do the trick? Jira handles Scrum, and short-term execution and tracking very well. However, for medium and long-term planning, Jira is limited.  Atlassian has recently introduced what they call Roadmaps: Basic Roadmaps: timeline view of Epics with basic dependencies and a single team. Advanced Roadmaps (was Portfolio for Jira): timeline view of a hierarchy ..read more