SAFe Transformation in Consulting

Per Version One’s Thirteenth Annual State of Agile Report, Scaled Agile Framework is the current dominant leader in Scaling Agile frameworks with 30% overall adoption within the industry.  With over 500,000 trained individuals, SAFe has  definitely made an impression within product and solution delivery. There are many case studies on Scaled Agile’s website regarding the

Choosing Methodologies

These days, most professionals have a few, if not several experts in their profession they follow with blogs, LinkedIn articles, tweets and any publications they make.  Outside of that, when a particular need arises, most use the typical search engine of choice to find all relevant topics to get a sufficient answer in the shortest

Technical Debt

Technical Debt There are three primary types of technical debt: naïve, unavoidable and strategic.  The naïve technical debt occurs due to lack of experience or foresight, thereby resulting in poorly built software. Unavoidable technical debt deals with improvements of tools and design patterns that can’t be utilized today, but will be available in the future. 

Risk Burn Down Chart

In my December blog, I covered the “Art of Risk Analysis” which skimmed over the idea of a risk burn down chart.  One of my main points is that risk review is a continuous process that should be checked on a frequent basis.  For larger projects where there are several risks, having a risk burn

Leading Indicators in Agile

Often in the world of project management, even the most experienced project managers occasionally get caught with their “pants down”.  How does that happen to even the best leaders?  Usually it involves people and their lack of communication within and beyond the team. So how does a project manager minimize the odds of getting surprised? 

The Art of Risk Analysis

I’ve been involved in delivering projects for over twenty years now and during that time have seen the good, the bad and the ugly.  Stories of the good are sometimes brought up as “feathers in one’s cap”, the bad ones tend to be reminders of how challenging delivering projects when people, process and technology are

Agile is a Tool Box… and a Very Huge One at That!

Consider modern Agile as a delivery philosophy.  Here’s my hypothesis.  Agile is an approach on selecting the best tools for your culture and product.  No one set of tools or even approaches will work “best” for any given engagement. If you don’t agree, then don’t and you can stop reading now.  It won’t hurt my

Repairman Jack in Agile

Okay, so I have been an avid reader of F. Paul Wilson’s “Repairman Jack” series (http://repairmanjack.com/) finding out about it through a book club my sales executive friend, Greg Kaufman, introduced to me back in 2002.  Aside from the fact that I’ve befriended a sales person is like cats living with dogs, the book really

The PMO phoenix is reborn

In my last article, I stated that the Project Management Office (PMO) is dead.  However, I also stated long live the PMO! In Greek mythology, the phoenix is a fiery bird that would be cyclically be reborn from its own ashes.  I believe the concepts and the principles of a Project Management Office will be

The PMO is dead; long live the PMO!

Today, the traditional Project Management Office (PMO) is being challenged as a viable model for project governance.  Back in the day when traditional waterfall process dominated IT project delivery, the PMO was king for larger organizations.  However, even when “PMO was king”, many people within an organization would consider the PMO unnecessary overhead, calling it,