Are you a lean-agile thinker? Do you want to be? Who are Lean-Agile Coaches and what do they do? Let's take a look at the role of Lean-Agile coaching and lean-agile thinking; starting with the "lean" side of things. Quality Systems thinking was introduced by Edward Deming in the mid 1950’s and 1960’s. While shunned…
With so many Agile methodologies out there it can be really tough to know which is the right one, and picking the right one is absolutely critical for your project. It’s critical because each has it’s own niche and each comes with it’s own weight and cost. It is so important that I can’t say…
Traditional project management places a strong emphasis on comprehensive metrics. The general thought is if you can’t measure it, then you can’t control it. While comprehensive metrics has its place, it’s often overused and adds unnecessary weight and complexity to a project. Our experience is the larger the organization, the more layers of metrics there…
Ah, the age old Agile question: what is the appropriate amount of documentation? The Agile founders gave us the 4 Values and 12 Principles which have guided us from the beginning, and time has proven them to be great guides. The second item in the Agile Values states “Value Delivered Over Comprehensive Documentation.” This value…
Users of agile sometimes create their “own version” of Agile terminology to suit an audience or an organization. Sometimes, this is done on purpose to reflect long held business terms. Other times, it’s because they simply didn’t know any better when starting out. While this helps puts terms in the context of a given environment,…
In April, Cambria hosted an OCM meet up in conjunction with the Association of Change Management Professionals in Northern California. Our goal was to take advantage of the opportunity to talk with other practitioners about the intersection of OCM and Agile, and facilitate discussion about their experiences. An ACMP colleague agreed to apply her sketch-noting skills…
Agile is not a silver bullet methodology that helps engineers build product faster or somehow equips organizations to deliver higher quality software to customers more frequently at less cost. Rather, it is a journey that builds the organizational culture, mentality, and behaviors that deliver more value to its customers with higher quality, greater reliability, and improved timeliness. Striving…
If you are pursuing Agile from a non-IT perspective and looking for a good book to get you going on Kanban for “knowledge work”, then you may be wondering - where do I even begin? We are excited that you are looking to move yourself into the Agile world. Kanban is near and dear to…
Let’s talk about a common problem that is a very real threat to any Agile company or project. We’ve all heard the term “pounding a square peg into a round hole” when something is misused, and I would be willing to bet that we’ve all experienced it. Some of you might be experiencing it right…
Our teams are asked quite a bit about performance testing in an Agile environment and how that might differ from the traditional waterfall approach. If you’re asking the same question, you’ve hit on one of the greatest heavyweight grudge matches in world history! Technical debt and feature development have battled for the spotlight since the…
