Library Introduction to OKRs Roger Swannell's excellent introductory talk about Objectives and Key Results: "OKRs aren’t about recording and tracking all the work your team is doing, only the most important work, the stuff that contributes to the big strategy and priorities."
Library Agile or not, it’s all about your worldview What do you believe about how the world works? Do you believe it works like a machine, that a cause always leads to an effect and that makes the world predictable? Or do believe it works in random ways, where sometimes a cause doesn’t have the expected effect and sometimes effects appear from unknown causes, that the way the world works is unpredictable and emergent.
Article It’s the agile mindset that matters for local government 8 May, 202420 September, 2024 Local authorities need to be more agile – it’s pretty much axiomatic. Particularly in our technology and digital related work, the success that many organisations have had in adopting agile delivery approaches seems to indicate that it’d be a good thing for councils to do more of. The local digital declaration advocates it, for example, by committing…
Resource Free resource: project management template 26 February, 202420 September, 2024 There are so many projects on the go in local authorities in particular that require a certain amount of documentation, no matter how old school it might feel. Often though it just doesn’t get done, and that’s largely because there’s often a gap between project document templates, which tend to be large and overblown, and…
Article Why big programmes suck – and what you can do about it 8 March, 202320 September, 2024 A lot of the time digital and technology work doesn’t produce the hoped for results because it’s part of a big programme. Lots of organisations love a big programme. They are useful ways of unlocking money from capital pots, they can make those involved feel pretty good about themselves when talking about big numbers and…
Library A Roadmap Readme In the dying days of 2022 I started to crowdsource a collection of roadmap examples to help land on a format and approach we could consistently embrace at the day job. I was looking for something that needed to walk a very fine line – an approach that aligned with our agile/product thinking and ways of working but that provided enough detail and clarity that it could help wean stakeholders off of the false certainty their delivery plans offer them.
Library Big programme design and the willing suspension of disbelief involved Whenever I have been involved either as part of the delivery or an observer of Big Programmes – usually in local government – I have been struck by the willing suspension of disbelief that participants have to sign up for. The first suspicion of disbelief is the idea that you can plan a two or three year programme and deliver certainty of process and outputs from the start.
Library Everyone loves a roadmap In agile programmes people prefer to talk about roadmaps rather than plans. This post is about the reasons behind this and the benefits of using a roadmap rather than a gantt chart to manage pure agile, or mixed methodology programmes.
Library Governance – there is a better way Teams using lean and agile ways of working often rub up against traditional modes of governance which can slow them down or demoralise them. Governance can become a blocker.
Library Experiments in roadmapping at GOV.UK Roadmaps can be a powerful tool to communicate the vision for a product’s development, unite teams of makers around common goals and let stakeholders know (roughly) when they can expect the improvements they care about.
