Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
When is Agile worth the Overhead?
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“Agile is so great we need to use it for EVERYTHING” “Agile is so much overhead, we stopped using it for ANYTHING” Are you also trying to navigate what to do with Agile? Whether it’s worth the overhead? After years of helping a diverse group of organizations figure out where and how to use agile methods, here's what I've learned... If you want the TL;DR version - Agile has the potential to shine when ….
What this also means is that in the absence of the need for iterative collaborative work, no matter how streamlined and effective your agile process is, it might not be worth the time Read the full When is Agile worth the Overhead article to explore some example contexts where Agile might or might not be applicable. It’s all about Intent and ContextHere’s the thing. Applying a cookie cutter approach for everything might seem more straightforward and more consistent, but requires a frustrating uphill battle to conquer a hill not worth conquering. In my experience, aligning on the intent and then focusing on relevant contexts creates much healthier, gratifying, and impactful change. PS I also find this framing when navigating the human/people aspects of another capital A adoption. |
Scaling w/ Agility
Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
Is Human in the Loop the real goal with AI? It's a starting point, but I think the goal is to shift to Human in the Double Loop Maybe its even bigger than that. Maybe Agentic AI is the path to unlocking Human Agency A leader I talked to yesterday wasn't sure what their work will look like a year from now. We were finishing an AI coaching sprint in which they shifted from chatting with AI and using Claude Code for very specific tasks to unleashing agentic AI on several complex problems,...
Reader, I just wrapped up a great conversation with Clemens Adolphs, co-founder of AIce Labs, for the Scaling With Agility podcast. We dug into a question we both see more and more leaders wrestling with: Why do so many AI proof-of-concept projects look promising on paper, but never scale past the pilot? Clemens and I discussed some emerging practices for dealing with the pace and uncertainty of developing internal AI capabilities. Here are a few of the ideas we unpacked: — How to avoid the...
"Instead of Portfolio Management - Just Create Product Teams" - Have you heard that before, Reader? While I understand the angst against Portfolio Management Theater as a solution to Agile Theater... And while I agree wholeheartedly that the north star is to descale by reorganizing around value I find reality a bit more nuanced....Most leaders I encounter can't "just create product teams" their way out of decades of complex products and systems. None of them are Jeff Bezos - they don't have...