6 lessons from leading global teams
For years technology leaders have emphasized the importance of their teams working face to face, but the rise of remote and global teams is making that increasingly harder to do. I’ve spent the last eight years working with people all around the world, and I’ve encountered many global teams that work together incredibly well and […]
Questions to ask when you hear “we need to accelerate development”
No one calls me when things are awesome. Google and Facebook aren’t calling me. The people that call me need help and one of the most common things I hear is that they need to “accelerate development.” It could be that they don’t have enough engineers or their engineers are kind of slow. But there […]
Are you doing stuff or creating value?
Note: This was co-authored with Derek Tiffany and was originally posted on the 3Pillar Global site. You can put a bunch of stickies on the wall, create tons of JIRA tickets and commit code, but are you creating value? Is the work you’ve done helping solve a problem for your customers or helping to acquire […]
Your methodology is holding you back
Agile, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Test Driven Development and whatever new and trendy thing out there are tools. They exist to help you to do something. They are supposed to help us be faster, make better products, be more people-centered, reduce waste or prevent errors. Too often we try to do these things with such […]
The truth behind scope creep (Take 3 Podcast)
I recently appeared on Take 3 Scene 16: The Truth Behind Scope Creep with my colleague Adam Hahn to talk about how there is no such thing as scope creep, it’s just change managed badly. The podcast was inspired by the article “Scope Creep or Just Change?” that I co-authored for Mind the Product. Image: Found this abstract image of […]
Talking planning with Peter Morville
Recently I sat down with Peter Morville to have a fascinating conversation about planning for his new book. Peter is a very accomplished information architect and author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Intertwingled, Search Patterns, and Ambient Findability. I’m not a born planner, I’m not the kid who color coded their schedule in elementary […]
Agile alone is not the solution to your product development problem
I think of an agile team like a swimmer in open water. They can have a very effective stroke that carries them far each time but if they don’t look up and adjust for currents or obstacles they aren’t going to make it to their destination. You can reliably produce great software with every sprint or […]