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Measuring Performance in the Adaptive Enterprise
Traditional thinking has turned budgets into fixed performance contracts that force managers at all levels to commit to specified financial outcomes, despite the fact that many of the underlying variables are beyond their control. As Agility increases the futility of this exercise becomes apparent. Thought-leader Jim Highsmith proposes a helpful alternative more harmonious with Agile values.
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Jim Highsmith Proposes An Adaptive Performance Management System
Jim Highsmith, Director of Cutter Consortium's Agile Project Management Practice told the APLN Leadership Summit audience yesterday: "...to achieve truly agile, innovative organizations, a change in our approach to performance management systems is necessary... 'Conforming to plan' while delivering scant business value will seriously impede agility, whether in projects or the entire enterprise.
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Digital Focus Unveils Market Survey Results at Agile2006
The survey finds Agile Software Development gaining momentum: interest in Agile methods is growing across the IT landscape with 81 percent of those surveyed either actively using Agile development within their organization or looking for opportunities to do so. Launched at the Agile 2005 Conference to assess the state of agile adoption, this year 136 execs in 128 organizations responded.
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Agile Fixed Price Contracting
On the high-volume ScrumDevelopment newsgroup, an interesting question has appeared, once again: "Is it possible to run SCRUM with fixed price contracts especially custom projects?". Ron Jeffries, Mike Beedle and others offer replies from experience.
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Ron Jeffries Overviews Financial Implications of 80-20 Rule
Pareto's rule, also known as the 80-20 rule, tells us that we can acheive 80% of the benefits from 20% of the software. The implication is that we might want to stop at that 80% level whenever possible.
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Planning 101 for Agile Teams
Detractors have propagated the myth that "Agile teams don't plan", which couldn't be farther from the truth. Planning is essential to Agile, because of its empirical nature: plan, execute, inspect, adapt... plan again. Stacia Heimgartner outlines the five levels of planning required to set good expectations with all levels of the organization.
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Worth Repeating: The BigBook Technique
Mark Hedlund has a favourite story: he tells of the BigBook Technique, a simple ploy engineers once used to communicate with their CEO about a death-march project. With yet another big-project implosion in the news, Hedlund felt the need to roll out this simple remedy, again. In effect: nine women simply cannot deliver a baby in one month. If that sounds familiar, this story may be of use to you.