Author archives: OlafLewitz
26 January 2012
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
It is quite interesting to note how little most software developers know about hardware development. Many of us take it for granted that hardware development cannot match the pace of software. While this might be true for the case of the best software teams, able to update a software system every few minutes using continuous integration, for the common pace of biweekly software delivery this is nothing more than a false assumption.
At today’s ScrumTisch, the first chosen topic by the crowd was how to do Agile with non-software teams. We started the discussion with a short list of questions:
- What to show at the end of the timebox?
- How to set the length of the timebox?
Interestingly, these questions, although raised by the audience, apparently were not hot enough to actually get discussed... (the topic Agile Beyond Software is much broader than this post, I’m just covering what was discussed tonight—a touch on the surface...)
Hardware
It turned out, that the person suggesting the topic actually had a ...
12 January 2012
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
Agile might still be a small niche which apparently is not yet recognised by the “serious” business thinkers’ community. There seem to be people out there who are rethinking management and business for the 21st century, and we are not connected to them although collaboration between us could produce great results.
“Happy New Year! 2012 won't know what's hit it”.
Dave Sharrock after the agile42 Internal Coach Camp
We want to make Dave’s prediction a reality with the Agile with a Purpose blast (projects don’t hit, right?). We want you to know why we’re doing it.
Prepare to be astonished!
Some Background
Stephen Parry (@leanvoices) said at the ALE2011 conference that he would like to see agile/lean practitioners joining forces, using their distributed open social network to amplify their knowledge of how Agile works and how it should not be used ("to do the wrong ...
22 December 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
Agile and Lean have a single purpose: to continually challenge the status quo. If you’re not doing that, you’re probably an impediment to it.
Olaf Lewitz
agile42 Coach.
Visiting Business Influencer and Linchpin.
My motto is that of NannyMcPhee: "When you need me, but do not want me, I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go."
- On
- 22 December 2011
- In
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Agile with a Purpose,
agile,
Lean Management
- Tags
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agile,
kanban,
lean,
management,
scrum
It’s nearly Christmas: time for wishes. This is how I envision and wish Agile and Lean to be (and I’ve seen it work, multiple times).
Value and Delight, On Time
The two pillars of Lean, as defined by Toyota, are continuous improvement (Kaizen) and respect people. Scrum and Agile are based on the Lean principles and disciplines. Agile and Lean (done right) enable your organisation to create the most value in a given amount of time—and to continuously increase your organisation’s capability to discover that value, shape scope and build awesome solutions.
To achieve predictability and ...
14 December 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Sergey Dmitriev as awesome coach of the week 50, 2011!
My first acquaintance with Sergey has been a failure: at the amazing XP2010 conference in Trondheim, Norway, we agreed to share a ride to the airport to get home, but then lost touch... No harm done:-) Shortly after, we connected on Twitter as we had found a common passion: we wanted to create the first ever AgileCoachCamp in Norway!
Community Compassionist
I had co-organised the AgileCoachCamp Germany and was in the middle of creating the first Play4Agile unconference, and was used to (what I’ve since called privately) the “German way of conference organising”: more than a dozen organisers, weekly ...
3 November 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Ralf Kruse as Awesome Coach of the Week 44, 2011!
My first pair-coaching endeavour with Ralf was arguably the toughest setting I’ve ever been in for an agile transition. We started training teams who had basically been told by their management that all the specialisation they had accumulated over decades would be unneeded in their bright future, using Scrum... And this was an engineering company producing mechanically and electronically complex and innovative goods for a challenging small market. The setup couldn’t have been worse, and within a few days Ralf and I developed this image of standing back to back, shielding each other from the mud we were ...
18 September 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
What is Feature Injection? And how and why should that be applied to service delivery?
Recently, I worked with a service delivery team in a company that is currently changing into an agile product development organisation. The company develops and runs one of Germany's biggest websites. Let's call them Awesome Online. After introducing Scrum and Kanban to all development teams over the past two years, executive and product management have started to introduce agile and lean thinking into the organisational structure and culture.
Motivation
A main motivational factor for the development teams was the definition of product visions for all products, and the application of Feature Injection as introduced by Liz Keogh to ...
10 September 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honor Stephen Parry as Awesome Coach of the Week 36, 2011!
Stephen LeanVoices Parry is an unusual addition to our list, as he is not an agile coach. Stephen is a management coach working on the same goal as we are: business transformation. What I like about his approach is that he recognises the similarity and relationship of Lean and Agile. When he submitted his talk on “Creating an Integrated ICT Value Stream Using Lean and Agile Thinking” for ALE2011 which took place this week in Berlin, I was delighted to have such an experienced Lean expert at the conference, but at the same time... Wondered why he wanted to come ...
10 August 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Chris Matts as awesome coach of the week 32, 2011!
Chris Matts is one of the most inventive, creative and illustrative guys I have the pleasure to know. We collaborated on a few half-fun, half-serious projects, only one of which made it to being published—LeanProcrastionation. Chris and Olav Maassen contributed important ideas regarding the identification of the Last Responsible Moment, which lead to a game being created that’s going to be played at the Agile2011 in Salt Lake City tomorrow… Unfortunately, without me.
I only once met Chris in person so far, on my first night in Trondheim where we attended the XP2010 conference. We had much fun ...
1 August 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Andreas Leidig as awesome coach of the week 31, 2011!
I first met Andreas @leiderleider Leidig at last year’s AgileCoachCamp. Since then, we met at a few other (un)conferences, collaborated in organising a new one, helped the ALE network grow… In short, we became much more than colleagues. Having met Andreas at the Deutsche Scrum in Stuttgart the week before my holidays, I was reminded of a compliment by Sebastian Schürmann that I wrote about before…
Will Disobey Anyone If Required
Andreas takes this mindset to another level. If there was a word for “dogmatic about being undogmatic”, I’d use it for him:–)
Let me give ...
5 July 2011
Author:
Olaf Lewitz
We honour Michael Sahota as Awesome Coach of the Week 27, 2011!
I first met Michael Sahota at the XPDays Benelux 2010. I had heard his name before, but not much about him… A funny connection was our first topic of conversation: A colleague of mine from Berlin had moved to Toronto in the Summer, and had been looking for a job as a ScrumMaster there. Tuesday before the XPDays we chatted on Skype, and she told me she had just signed a contract: “And do you know what’s really funny? You’ll meet my boss in two days!” That was not Michael, but a friend of him in Toronto, and ...
