Organizing for Innovation

by Jim Highsmith, 18 March 2013 | The Agile Blogosphere

One of the constant questions I get goes something like, “Should we create a separate agile group, team, department, product team, or plan our agile transformation within our current organization?” This question arises for agile transformations, but also for innovation in general. Many people approach these questions as problems to be solved once and for [...]The post Organizing for Innovation...
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Determining Business Value

The topic of business value is a complex one and it’s easy to get mired in the morass of calculating ROI or in trying to define what intangibles are relevant to your organization....
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How Agile Do You Need to Be?

by Jim Highsmith, 19 December 2012
The Agile Blogosphere

In The Upside of Turbulence Donald Sull makes an insightful statement, “companies do not pass through life cycles, opportunities do.” Turbulence causes opportunities and companies...
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Effective Collaboration: Discussion, Decision Making, Commitment

by Jim Highsmith, 28 November 2012
The Agile Blogosphere

The Agile community promotes the value of collaboration in teams, although promotes may too weak a verb for our fascination with collaboration. And while collaboration can have many...
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Embracing Paradox

“All of us like to think that human affairs are essentially rational. … The wealth of experience that fails to support this notion never seems to faze us. … That human affairs...
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What is Agility?

There is no Agility for Dummies. Agility isn’t a silver bullet. You don’t achieve it in five easy steps. So what is it? For myself, I’ve characterized agility in two statements:...
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Agile Bureaucracy: When Practices become Principles

In Good to Great Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, Jim Collins writes that great organizations work to both preserve their core values and principles and...
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More than Software: Integrating Economics, Product, and Social Responsibility

We often compartmentalize our lives—work goes here, politics goes there, social responsibility goes somewhere else. This compartmentalization is often schizophrenic, but seemingly...
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Reducing Cycle Time

An increasing number of organizations are moving towards radical reductions in cycle time as they move towards rapid business responsiveness and Continuous Delivery. (I’m trying...
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Build Less, Start Sooner

Jeff Patton recently reminded me of two simple strategies for software development that I’ve talked about from time to time—Build Less Software and Start Sooner. I thought I’d...
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Making Self-Organization Work

Discipline without freedom is tyranny; freedom without discipline is chaos (Cullen Hightower). Morning Star is the largest tomato processor in the United States with 400 employees...
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“Over’s” Usefulness in Decision Making

The Agile Manifesto was written in a very deliberate style, for example, “Individuals and interactions over process and tools.” The word “over” was carefully chosen and establishes...
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Beyond Project Plans

The Agile community has long advocated self-organizing teams. However, the emphasis has been on how teams perform work, make technical decisions and the like. Most teams are still operating...
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What do Leaders Want from Agile?

by Jim Highsmith, 21 February 2012
The Agile Blogosphere

I’ve just returned from a busy 4-week trip to Germany and Australia, and then Chicago. In shaking off the jet-lag cobwebs I took some time to reflect on this trip and others over...
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Can-do Thinking Makes Risk Management Impossible

“Can-do thinking makes risk management impossible. Since acknowledging real risk is defeatism, the risk management function in a can-do organization is restricted to dealing with...
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Micromanaging Angst

by Jim Highsmith, 13 December 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

I’ve always been concerned that some agile practices are applied even when they are not appropriate for a particular situation. I’ve called this Agile 101, learning the basics,...
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Oscillation versus Iteration

Short iterations can cause Agile teams to lose focus and begin oscillating rather than iterating. This can happen from several perspectives—business, technical, user—and it’s...
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