Problem: "We spend a lot of time getting a project to the point of starting"
Problem: "We spend a lot of time getting a project to the point of starting"
Here are some possible solutions.
What is the “Product Operating Model” and who has successfully applied it?
The adoption of a Product Operating Model (POM) has emerged as a critical strategy for organizations seeking to compete in an era defined by rapid technological advancement and shifting customer expectations. This report examines five companies across industries—financial services, healthcare, technology, media, and hospitality—that successfully transitioned to a POM, analyzing their implementation strategies, challenges, and outcomes.
By synthesizing insights from real-world transformations, this study identifies common principles and tactical approaches that enabled these organizations to accelerate innovation, improve operational efficiency, and create sustained competitive advantage.
Estimation is a wasteful activity once your teams are predictable
There can be lots of excitement and enthusiasm to cut out estimation altogether. But without the right conditions, it falls apart very quickly, and people revert back to expecting estimates.
Split teams into smaller ones to scale up delivery.
Software teams become large usually because organisations are delivering projects, and they load up teams with project work, then need additional capacity to meet deadlines. As a result, teams bloat into large gatherings of uncoordinated people and more "management" is applied to ensure people and teams are working hard.
If you want to deliver more value, then stop using project delivery.
Many organisations have successfully transitioned to Agile ways of working. They might have implemented CI/CD, DevOps and Cloud infrastructure. But guess what? Their portfolio isn't getting delivered any faster.
And the culprit? The culprit is Project orientation and Project management.
Project-orientation causes focus on individual utilisation, which is a key contributor to bad culture
This individual-assignment problem prevents cross-fertilisation of skills, knowledge and experience. We WANT individuals to pair up and work together. We want cross-functional team members to pair up, not just the engineers. Through pairing and sharing, teams build bonds to support each other. Through pairing and sharing we build redundancy - if someone goes on leave, then someone else can cover for them if there’s an issue they know how to solve.
3 mistakes companies make when creating performance metrics
"We want to measure performance and report it to management..."
Don't do this:
1. Measure individual people's performance.
2. Focus on outputs.
3. Ignore the knock-on effects of those metrics.
Don’t use the Spotify model to speed up delivery
Many organisations followed down the path of the “Spotify Model” by adopting the roles and org structure, hoping and expecting that would make teams faster.
In many cases, nothing has actually changed except for some people’s titles. Oh, and “Squads, Guilds and Chapters.” The hierarchy remains the same. The responsibilities remain the same. The work remain the same. Nothing important changed.
Is your company good at Agile but bad at delivery?
Organisations have realised that Scrum is no good at long-term planning, estimation and scheduling. Things that senior leaders expect of their software delivery teams. Scrum makes no promises about completing a project on time, because it takes a short-term, iterative view of work. Scope expands to satisfy the customer. So either scope expands and the time allocated to the project is variable, or time is fixed, and the completable scope is largely fixed as a result.
Reporting can drive bad behaviours
It’s important to be aware that reporting drives particular behaviours. If you demand the wrong outcomes in your reporting then you drive the incorrect behaviour.
You are responsible for the behaviour change you are triggering when asking teams and people to send your reports, even if you are not aware of the incorrect behaviour it is triggering.
Why are our projects always running late?
The reason your projects are constantly running late is because of the push to get more work done.
Managers see an idle worker, or idle team, and they see waste. They go about remediating that waste by assigning more work.
That worker was idle because of blocked flow, and an indetermine wait time to become unblocked. Now that worker has additional work that takes them away from the original work.
How Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches can align with management teams
What management teams care about is -
- How is this improving getting through our portfolio of work?
- Are we better off now than we were 6 months ago?
- Are we going any faster overall? Can we prove it to an executive audience?
How are you improving your organisation's overall delivery capability?
You're improving your Agile / Scrum / Kanban - great.
But what are you doing to improve your organisation's overall delivery capability?
Matrix organisation structure doesn’t suit modern software teams
Matrix organisations restrict skills acquisition, knowledge transfer, and portability of skills across teams and domains.
There are ways of breaking out of Matrix organisation, especially for I.T teams, and the benefits are faster teams, greater collaboration, increased cross-pollination of skills and capabilities, and many more.
Do you want to create greater agility in your organisation?
Many organisations have a delivery pipeline that resembles a very polished oldsmobile - it has been maintained and restored like the day it was made. But it is no longer fit for purpose.
These steps create immediate improvements in your organisation’s agility and adaptability. Apply these skills to get greater performance outcomes from your software teams.