Let’s free up agile teams…
Why are we so parochial in software industry about not recognizing the bigger economic sense rather than limiting ourselves to a singular idea that collocated teams are the best option?...
How do you design agile feedback?
Feedback is perhaps the most important aspect of the overall agile lifecycle - without a proper, honest and timely feedback, there is no ‘adapt’ step in the inspect-adapt cycle. However designing a proper feedback instrument for a human-human interaction, like a training program, is a totally different thing because it entails imprecise measurements that are often influenced by people’s mental models, skills and experiences, and not to mention - their calendars! Needless to say, these feedbacks could mean anything to different people on different days....
Design Vs. Innovation?
Even the ideas need to procreate in order to produce better ideas! Innovation tells which ideas should procreate, and Design tells how they should procreate! They both must be present in a 'cooptetive' manner - competing and yet collaborating at the same time. ...
Dude, where’s my customer?
Startups that operate under a stealth mode achieve over 90% failure rates. While they might have bright ideas, access to top talent, adequate funding, etc., they typically fail to accomplish their original objectives. A key reason behind such spectacular failure rates is premature scaling at each stage of the startup. In this talk, we will examine the mistakes that startups make, and what we can learn from the Customer Development model proposed by Steve Blank to improve better chances of survival and growth....
Why is your agile still a lot like dogma on steroids?
I still continue to be amazed (thought ‘shocked’ and 'dumbfounded' will be a more appropriate words here) by the amount of dogma in agile circles. Do this! Don’t do this! Wasn’t agile meant to liberate us from the tyrannies of the so-called big monolithic non-agile white elephant processes, and create a more nimble mindset, flexible culture and adaptive process framework where ‘inspect and adapt’ was valued more than ‘dogma and prescription’?...
Does the internet know you?
This blog post is about those brave 5% who decide to take matters in their hands and leave the comforts of corporate job and social prestige to walk alone into an uncertain but perhaps more exciting future. I salute their fortitude. Unfortunately, in many of those cases, they are extremely ill-prepared for the uncertain future that lies ahead…the internet doesn't know them!...
Is your plan just a placebo?
Plans have a huge credibility problem. For large part of recorded history, they have always had this problem. With all the advancements we have made in estimations, forecasting, scheduling, risk management and planning, our execution still continues to challenge us, at times even confound us....
Why user stories make sense?
User stories are meant to be a placeholder to initiate an early conversation between the product owner and the team on key hypotheses so that a quick validation of them could be done to refine/confirm/reject our understanding of what the customer really wants....
How do design and build an organization for success?
In my experience, there are three critical elements that need to be present in 'interlocking proportions' for any organization to truly achieve a sustainable long-term success. When I say 'interlocking proportions' I am implying two key things - one that there must be a natural and mutually complementary fit among all the components, and secondly these components are in such measure that they complement, ideally amplify, each other, rather than canceling out one component at the cost of other component....
What Emerging Markets Customers Really Want from the Internet: An Indian Perspective
India is a new gold rush market. Home to some 1.2 Billion people, half of whom under the age 25, and buoyed by the recent economic growth, the country is poised to be a major economic powerhouse for the next few decades before becoming the second largest economy by 2050. In this short article, let’s review some of the data and trends that I discussed earlier in my presentation at the PDMA conference in Orlando, Florida....