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…
Article 5 things for local leaders to know and understand about digital and technology 8 November, 202320 September, 2024 This quote from an article by the always insightful Jerry Fishenden really stuck out for me: With apologies to the late scientist and author Arthur C Clarke, to those who don’t understand technology, any sufficiently advanced marketing bullshit from snake oil merchants peddling their cryptocurrency, NFT, blockchain and Web3 potions is indistinguishable from magic. Computer Weekly, 13…
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 guide to agile communication The traditional approach to comms is to do a lot of planning up front. Many teams will embark on a “comms strategy”, or perhaps write a set of “comms principles”, and then set about filling a calendar or grid with expected messages at expected times. Most of these are unnecessary when doing comms for agile work and agile teams.
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 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.
