Archives
Kaizen Camp Australia 2013 event reflection
Posted on May 24, 2013 Leave a Comment
Kaizen Camp was held in Melbourne this week, 20-21 May 2013. Kaizen Camp is an unconference held in the style of Lean Coffee with 8 sessions, 60 attendees and over 50 topics discussed. It was the first Kaizen Camp in Australia. The great part of Kaizen Camp is the networking, learning and knowledge sharing using […]
LAST Conference 2012 Notes
Posted on August 4, 2012 2 Comments
Last week I attended the LAST Conference (Lean, Agile, Systems Thinking) held at Swinburne University. The LAST Conference is a big departure from the Agile Australia 2012 conference I attended earlier this year. There was no fanfare, no big build up, little corporate advertising and significantly less people. It was also only $50 for the […]
Agile, Walt Disney Creativity Strategy and Ritual Dissent
Posted on April 10, 2012 Leave a Comment
Recently a colleague and I were facilitating an agile project initiation workshop. To help the team to come up with ideas and formulate solutions for the problem they were trying to solve we used a method that combined the Walt Disney Creativity Strategy and Ritual Dissent. The Walt Disney Creativity Strategy The Walt Disney Creativity […]
Innovation through customer collaboration and feedback
Posted on March 9, 2012 Leave a Comment
Nordstrom is one of USA’s leading fashion specialty retailers and is a Fortune 500 company (2011 – ranked 254). When I think of a fashion retail company, innovation isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. So how does a large retail company like Nordstrom innovate? Through the creation of a Lean Startup team, called […]
Useless sprint goals
Posted on November 18, 2011 Leave a Comment
A sprint goal helps to enable the team to focus on for the next 2 weeks. What does everyone want the team to work on next? The Scrum Guide [Oct 2011] states: The Sprint Goal gives the Development Team some flexibility regarding the functionality implemented within the Sprint. As the Development Team works, it keeps […]
Learning from mistakes – it’s all about continuous improvement
Posted on August 18, 2011 1 Comment
Kaizen (改善), Japanese for “improvement”, or “change for the better” refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes. Teams I coach frequently ask me for “best practices”. Do not assume that “best practices” in previous projects will be equally successful in another project. In some cases, “best practices” from one context can be […]
I am an Agile Plumber
Posted on July 10, 2011 2 Comments
I am an Agile Plumber – I eliminate waste, remove blockages and increase flow. This week we had an agile workshop to establish some goals and create some epics for next quarter’s release for the agile change team at an organization I am coaching. One of the items we covered in the workshop was to […]
I want to run an agile project
Posted on June 21, 2011 2 Comments
This is all too funny! Whilst the video is intended to be humorous, the pain of the “Agile Guy” maybe all too familiar for some. Agile changes many things we have become use to over many years – agile questions the status quo and challenges our muscle memory……..
Don’t collaborate here!
Posted on June 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
I saw a few of these signs posted up around an office site I visited today and was amused by it. The office cubicles were also very high (‘Dilbert’ cubicles come to mind). In fact they were high enough that we couldn’t see people’s heads. The workspace was definitely reflective of a non-collaborative culture. A […]
What about Agile Documentation?
Posted on June 9, 2011 Leave a Comment
I have been asked countless times “how is documentation managed on agile projects?” or “can you give me a template for agile documentation”. I have also heard statements like “we do not need to do any documentation when using agile”. And more recently I was asked “how do I best document an agile build as […]
