In our industry of product development, it is common that we try to learn from success. The successful people summarize a few factors from their experience, often in the name of best practices, then others would learn to apply. It is believed that A leads to success, thus the learning
A mental model reflects an individual's beliefs, values, and assumptions. As those are quite often internal, we need to somehow express them in order to learn and improve. In fact, the model with Causal Loop Diagram is a representation of the mental model. We could explore different mental
#backlogs is the ultimate lever for agility. This is the insight we gained from the systems modeling exercises in my recent CLP course. I used to think of two main designs from LeSS: 1) one product backlog and 2) feature team. I found that these two were just the different
This is the seventh article in the series of seeing system dynamics in organizational change. In the last article, we concluded that incremental structural change was more appropriate for huge organizations. In this article, we shall look at the different approaches for incremental structural change. Two approaches There are mainly
This is the sixth article in the series of seeing system dynamics in organizational change. We shall examine the topic of structural change in this and next articles. We first look at the scope of structural change - how big structural change is appropriate, and what factors and dynamics are
This is the fifth article in the series of seeing system dynamics in organizational change. In the previous article, we concluded that the best time to de-scale was when the organization is still small and has few roles. In this article, we take up the challenge of reducing special roles,
This is the fourth article in the series of seeing system dynamics in organizational change. In this and next articles, we are going to look at one specific change in the large-scale product development organization: de-scale to scale. This means to simplify the organization to achieve agility, and this is
This is the third article in the series of seeing system dynamics in organizational change. Even though we have agreed on the change vision and is progressing during the norm, we lose the plot when crisis comes. During the norm There is always a gap between our change vision and
This is the second article in the series of seeing system dynamics in organizational change. We shall learn where the local optimization comes from, and how important it is to define a clear system optimizing goal and use that to guide the change. Local optimization "It is more cost-efficient
I have written a series of blogs focusing on seeing system dynamics in organizational design. Now, i'd like to start a new series, focusing on organizational change. In this first one, let's understand three common problems in organizational changes: 1. change stalls after it is initiated,
Zooming out and seeing the big picture is a form of systems thinking, and we see how it helps to understand Scrum roles. Distributed project management "Distributed project management" is a very powerful exercise regarding Scrum roles. We start to write down all project management tasks in post-it
As part of the LeSS trainer application, I was asked to give a graphical representation of LeSS. Here's the result showing my view of LeSS. A series of choices LeSS is a series of choices for the large-scale product development. We could make any choice if we were
[Team Leader = TL; Product Owner = PO; ScrumMaster = SM] The real Scrum requires significant organizational redesign. I have seen two common settings to pilot Scrum: 1) project group and 2) component team, as those are existing structures thus convenient to just use them. However, without organizational redesign, you could not adopt
This sounds like an easy choice in Agile development, however, single-functional team such as testing team is still prevalent in many organizations. There are forces favoring in it. By understanding the factors and dynamics behind different choices, we make more informed decisions. Efficiency & Quality vs. Cycle time Why do
Two years ago, I wrote a blog article called "Revisit feature team". I felt not quite complete, thus, the thought went on, until I discovered what was missing recently. Collective ownership Let me recap the scenario here. There is one so-called feature team, in which small groups work
In part 1, we looked at the case of platform as product. Now, we are going to look at the case of product area as product. Those products all have customer views, but there is possibility to define a broad product, then the products become product areas in the broad