How do I define leadership? Leadership is the ability to adapt the setting so everyone feels empowered to contribute creatively to solving the problems. Leadership is an ability, meaning a leader has a capacity to do something through talent and skill. Talent is natural ability and skill is proficiency gained through training and experience. Talent … [Read more...]
Trade-off: Go For Quality
What typically happens when product development decides to create a superior product? The most likely result is 1. slower delivery or 2. costlier development or 3. both slower delivery and costlier development. Why? You don't get something for nothing. Producing a higher quality product takes more development time, which delays delivery to … [Read more...]
Trade-off: Go For Speed
The people whose opinion counts the most choose to go for faster delivery speed. Their thinking may be sound; in this case, they want to beat their competitors to market. Choosing faster product delivery visibly sacrifices product quality and, in my experience, it often invisibly sacrifices the economy of product support. In this post, I answer … [Read more...]
A Riddle about Projects
All of us have experience with projects. In my experience, complex project never work exactly as planned. What is the first thing about a project that must be adapted when things aren't working as planned? Answer, the story about the project. For instance, when a software project is about to miss a milestone, you may hear a story about testing … [Read more...]
Short-Circuit Chaos?
Managers who like to be in control have a predictable reaction to their organization grappling with a change which creates chaos -- they want it to stop. When? Now, right now. What happens if management decides to short-circuit chaos with a magical solution? What happens if management accepts chaos as a necessary but uncomfortable period of the … [Read more...]