Teams that don't make customer facing work still work on "products" and have "customers." This article explains how to think about this kind of work - from HR, Legal, Finance et al - in a new light.
Why does every project have to be Agile these days?
Truly agile teams enjoy the ability, desire and safety to respond to change over following a plan.
The Lean UX Canvas
In most of my work these days I don't often use an official canvas. I prefer to pick and choose the assumptions that can be found on the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas and others as appropriate for the client, project or initiative I'm working on and weave them together to form testable hypotheses and experimentation plans. … Continue reading The Lean UX Canvas
Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking
There’s an unforgettable scene in my favorite movie, Goodfellas, where Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta pay a late night visit to Pesci’s mom. Despite their best efforts to leave quickly she invites them to eat something. During the late-night meal, they discuss a painting in her kitchen. The painting is of a man … Continue reading Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking
Moving To A Continuous World. This Changes Everything.
Hey folks - I, for one, choose not to give up on summer just yet. Technically we’ve got until the 21st of September and I’m soaking up every day of sun until such time as I have to break out the fall sweaters and jackets (which given the forecast here in metro NYC, … Continue reading Moving To A Continuous World. This Changes Everything.
Maintaining the winds of change
I’m often asked how to get executives on board with cultural and process change. It seems that product teams buy into the ideas of lean and agile relatively quickly but convincing management is an order of magnitude more difficult. We’ve discussed several reasons for this in previous newsletters. But let’s just assume that you’ve … Continue reading Maintaining the winds of change
Can you practice Lean Startup in the Enterprise?
Last week at the inaugural The Lean Event in Brighton, England I gave a new talk called Scaling Lean: Project, Program, Portfolio. You can see the slides here. In the talk I discussed the challenges of scaling Lean Startup practices in large companies. Despite all the talk of wanting to act like startups and build/measure/learn when it … Continue reading Can you practice Lean Startup in the Enterprise?
Lean UX in the Enterprise
I've spent the past 5 years speaking, teaching, coaching and working with teams aspiring to bring a customer-centric point of view to their product development processes. Some have seen great success. Some, despite strong desire and a willingness to adapt have struggled. The challenges the successful teams have overcome have rarely been tactical ones. They've … Continue reading Lean UX in the Enterprise
Agile is not a substitution for vision
In his blog post from 2011, Mike Cottmeyer, an agile consultant and coach, listed off the 13 most common reasons his clients began their agile transformation. The list contains reasons like, “faster time to market”, “early ROI” and “risk reduction and predictability.” My sense is that this spectrum of drivers falls along a timeline … Continue reading Agile is not a substitution for vision
There is no such thing as a killer feature
The other night we had reason to celebrate. Something we'd been waiting on for 2 years had finally come through. We'd worked hard and it paid off. My wife suggested we go out to a steak dinner. Forgetting for a second that I don't eat beef (hey, there's always the "surf" half of "surf n … Continue reading There is no such thing as a killer feature