Photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash When I say IT prioritisation, I mean the process by which we choose how to spend our limited resources within an IT organisation in order to deliver value. It doesn’t matter if the value for you is internal efficiency, external revenue, or anything in between. We simply can’t do everything, so we need to make choices. These choices are often hard enough to make, requiring us to make decisions using imperfect knowledge in a complex environment, but we seem hell-bent on making it 10 times harder. Choose a consistent IT prioritisation technique One of the m ..read more

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash Product teams, or product alignment, is rapidly becoming one of the biggest hot topic IT discussions. Following the trend of a host of other buzzwords, Product Alignment has become confusing, contradictory, and unfortunately dogmatic. I’d like to take a moment to both pare back and consolidate the essence of what being aligned to a product actually means. I’ve recently written about how I believe product alignment to be an anti-pattern, but I’m not going to change the global grammar without some pretty serious effort that I’m unwilling to spend. So, while I may ta ..read more

Photo by Hunter Harritt on Unsplash It’s likely a coincidence, but I’ve recently noticed a slew of issues arising in my work around test data management. As I dug into this, I found a disappointing lack of prescient information on how to manage this in an Agile environment. It’s going to be a quick one this week, but here’s my take on agile test data management. What is agile test data management? Test data management is the process by which we create and manage realistic data for use in the creation of software. Agile test data management is how we manage this in an Agile environment. Simple ..read more

Photo by Olga Guryanova on Unsplash This is a question that got asked on a live stream panel I was part of recently. My initial reaction was blunt. Of course we do, and here’s all the evidence you have. But then I started thinking about it a little more deeply. I’ve come to the conclusion that no, you don’t need a daily stand-up. But it’s a rare situation where this is actually true. What is a daily stand-up? A core meeting of many Agile implementations is the daily stand-up. This is a short, collaborative planning session that the team will come together for at the beginning of every work day ..read more

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash A definition of done is one of the cheapest and most effective ways in which you can start tackling IT issues. It can improve quality, transparency, accountability, alignment, and even predictability. All at the cost of a conversation and some documentation. There’s plenty of material on what a definition of done looks like and why you might want one, but not much on how to go about constructing your own. This is my attempt to fill that gap. Why would you want a definition of done? Before digging into the mechanics, let’s explore why you should actual ..read more

Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash An article I recently wrote on Agile Test Data Management prompted some responses on a more fundamental level. What is Agile testing? There are plenty of methods, frameworks, and comprehensive guides available that will provide you with a template for Agile testing. Unfortunately, most of these are either too prescriptive or thinly-veiled waterfall anyway. This isn’t one of those, this will be a quick dive into the principles that might help you evolve your own practice. What do we test? Going back to basics, what’s the intent of testing in the first place ..read more

Photo by Hunter Harritt on Unsplash It’s likely a coincidence, but I’ve recently noticed a slew of issues arising in my work around test data management. As I dug into this, I found a disappointing lack of prescient information on how to manage this in an Agile environment. It’s going to be a quick one this week, but here’s my take on agile test data management. What is agile test data management? Test data management is the process by which we create and manage realistic data for use in the creation of software. Agile test data management is how we manage this in an Agile environment. Simple ..read more

Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash You can’t move for people talking about the project to product journey lately. Getting organisations to start mapping out what their products are so they can build cross-functional teams around them. Projects are transitory and lose us all of the learning, we want long-lived squads! While these sentiments are all rock-solid, unfortunately, they’re missing the point. I’m going to be controversial and say that creating a product team simply isn’t good enough. What you actually need is outcome alignment. The case for product teams This is easily a pretty in-depth ..read more

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash One of the largest challenges preventing organisations from competing effectively in the market is their structure. When you are optimised for technology or role, then you are not optimised for customer value. But how do you actually get there? What does good look like for your organisation if you went back to the drawing board? I’m going to share a process I’ve developed for redesigning a system for outcome alignment. Note that this is not going to be a full article on digital transformation or strategic redesign. I am simply going to focus o ..read more

Where We Stand The role of the project manager in Agile is often a complicated one. While there is little concrete direction by many of the frameworks, it is often understood that a traditional project manager may often find themselves moving into a Scrum Master or Product Owner role. The intent behind this guidance is clear, there’s no need for a Project Management Office (PMO) where we’re going. I disagree. Let me introduce the Lean PMO. The fundamental difference that I would like to see, as the PMO adopts Agile, is the move from push to pull. Traditionally the PMO can be seen to act as a c ..read more