How does it happen that all living beings, from a single cell organism to a human body, know how to grow, adapt to an environment, simply keep living? Even if each cell is a complex and relatively independent piece of machinery, a synchronization at a higher level (tissues, organs) is achieved by receiving and processing […]
When I was a senior manager, fresh ways to look at old situations were always welcome. Now that I’m a consultant and coach, approaching new situations in a Lean way is a key part of the job! Let me introduce three organisational perspectives that I have found helpful: Right to left Outside in Upside down […]
One of the main properties of Kanban is limiting work in progress (WIP). This allows you to match any team’s development (or your personal) capacity. The most widely-adopted practice is to set WIP limits per column (workflow stage). However, it is also acceptable to establish limits per person or team. In my experience, WIP limits […]
High-quality project outcomes completed within a manageable time-frame – isn’t that what most businesses ultimately want to achieve? Of course that we all want projects to be completed on time and within initial budget. However, statistics are not so promising. We recently found some eye-opening data that caught our attention. According to PMI.org, for every […]
This is a sequel to the first guest post of Robert Falkowitz on the Kanbanize blog. Some of the information inside this article may be confusing if you haven’t read How Does Kanban Support Service Management Agility? To get the most value out of this post, please take the time to get familiar with Part 1. […]
Bob asked, “Is the project on schedule?” Will said, “We do Agile. We don’t follow a schedule.” Bob was left wondering how he might report this to the governance teams. Cathy asked, “What scope will be delivered in the next 2 months?” Joe answered, “We are agile. We do not estimate all work upfront. All I […]
Elsewhere, I have proposed a Manifesto for Service Management Agility, describing what agility in managing services would be. Kanban is well known as a method for agile management. So let me put these two concepts together. How does Kanban support service management agility? How can agile service managers make good use of Kanban? A Manifesto for […]
Тhe thing I often stumble upon, as a coach and consultant, is that many teams don’t track any metrics. Nothing. Ah, well sometimes the tool (like JIRA for example) tracks stuff for them. But then they don’t look at it, don’t understand it (because they didn’t create it) or it’s broken due to lots of […]
When was the last time you tried to motivate somebody? It doesn’t matter if you’re a top CEO, team leader, or a regular Joe. It doesn’t matter if you’re motivating a company, a team, or your daughter to clean her room. Motivation is the key to achieving your personal and professional goals. Motivating others can […]
My father taught me to play chess when I was very little, maybe four. There are many prodigy children who beat chess masters at four, but I wasn’t one of them. I was average.
My father never let me win against him, just because I was his son. He has always been