Blog
: March 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
A Failure Tolerant Culture Leads to Success
The Great Britain cycling team has just won an unprecedented 9 gold medals at the World Track Championships, held this year in Manchester, England. While home advantage might count for something, this article on BBC News is telling. Director of Performance, David Brailsford is clearly a leader who understand the importance of the W. Edwards Deming principle of first you drive out fear (point 8 of his 14 Points of Management). Brailsford puts his failure tolerant attitude at the top of his importance list when it comes to the secret of the team’s success.
“You cobble them all [athletes and staff] together, give them a good environment, you push them, make them not scared to fail,” said Brailsford.
“And you say ‘Let’s end up all over the track having tried to win rather than play safe and get a silver or bronze’. You remove that fear from the athletes and off we go.”
Time and again, I find it difficult to find better management and leadership advice than Deming. I find that creating a failure tolerant, fear free, innovative culture is the key to creating continuous improvement and ultimately achieving world class performance. It’s remarkable how well this advice holds up across so many walks of life: manufacturing; sports; and knowledge workers professions. Technorati tag: Management+Science
Posted by David on 03/30 at 06:21 AM
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Saturday, March 29, 2008
QCon London March 2008 - Kanban Presentation
View the Slideshare of my QCon presentation from March 2008 in London, Kanban - Creating a Kaizen Culture and Evolving Lean Software Engineering Solutions
David Anderson Kanban At Q Con<object style=“MARGIN: 0px” height=“355” width=“425”><param name=“movie” value=“http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=david-anderson-kanban-at-q-con-1205702960174210-3&stripped_title=david-anderson-kanban-at-q-con” />
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Technorati tag: Lean, Kanban, QCon, InfoQ, David+Anderson, Software+Engineering, Agile, Project+Management
Posted by David on 03/29 at 06:28 AM
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Thursday, March 27, 2008
APLN Fridays
Recently, I’ve come to realize that I don’t make enough out of my contribution to the APLN and the community contribution I make through it and this blog. I’ve added my APLN Board Membership to my resume and my LinkedIn Profile. I’ve also decided to dedicate every Friday, when I’m not working with clients, that is, every Friday that I’m in my office in Seattle, to APLN related work.
Currently, that means planning the forthcoming APLN Leadership Summit in Seattle.
I’m also going to be redesigning my blog and starting a fresh Channel APLN with a separate RSS feed. Look out for that soon.
I’m really happy with how the APLN is developing and the new focus we’ve brought to the organization this year. The APLN (note: we’ve more or less completely dropped the full name, Agile Project Leadership Network, in favor of a rebranding around the initials) knows what it wants to be now, a not-for-profit dedicated to bringing better leadership and management to knowledge worker industries with an initial focus on the IT sector and software development.
The APLN now has a clear focus around 3 main activities: Leadership Summits - these regional conferences provide learning opportunities for attendees and bring much needed funding to the APLN to support the other two activities; learning through a Wiki of Knowledge (LWOK) - if you like, a crowd-sourced alternative to other bodies of knowledge around project management; and a social networking and social media program designed to bring the community of leaders and managers closer together and provide transparency in to their achievements, learning, recognition and skills.
You’ll be hearing a lot more about these APLN activities as the year unfolds. I’m proud to be part of the APLN and find the challenge of bootstrapping and developing a nascent, startup, non-profit organization, fun and engaging. Technorati tag: Agile, APLN, David+Anderson
Posted by David on 03/27 at 06:51 AM
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Mitch Lacey: When Working Software is not Enough
The next APLN (Agile Project Leadership Network) Seattle meeting is on Monday, April 7.
Who: Mitch Lacey with Ascentium Corporation in Bellevue, WA
What: When Working Software is Not Enough: A Story of Project Failure
When: Monday April 7, 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Where: Avanade Inc. ( 2211 Elliott Avenue, Seattle, WA)
Please RSVP to Dragos Dumitriu (dragosd at avanade dot com). If the door is locked call Dragos (425.260.9283) or David Socha (206.418.8201)
. Food will be available at 5:30pm. Talk will start at 6pm.
More information is at http://apln-seattle.pbwiki.com/.
Description:
Teaser: The true measure of project progress is working software - or is it? Our team thought it was, and we were wrong. This is the story of our team, a team that set out to build a new order tracking system for a worldwide vehicle manufacturer, and failed.
Bio:
Mitch Lacey is an agile practitioner and the agile practice manager with Ascentium Corporation in Bellevue, WA. Mitch has been managing projects for over ten years and has numerous plan-driven and Agile projects under his belt.
Mitch honed his Agile skills at Microsoft Corporation, where he successfully released core enterprise services for Windows Live. While at Microsoft, he transitioned from Program Manager to Agile Coach, working hand-in-hand with groups throughout their transition to Agile practices.
Mitch continues to grow and refine his skills on the Agile projects he runs every day.
As a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a registered Project Management Professional (PMP), Mitch shares his experience in project and client management through Certified ScrumMaster courses, Agile coaching engagements, conference presentations, blogs and white papers.
He is the author of “Adventures in Promiscuous Pairing” presented and published at the Agile 2006 conference, “Transitioning to Agile: Key Lessons Learned in the Field” presented and published at the Fall 2007 PMI Global Congress in Atlanta, Georgia and “The Impacts of Poor Estimating - and How to Fix It” presented and published at the winter 2007 SQE Agile development conference in Orlando, Florida.
Mitch is currently under contract with Addison Wesley to publish a book titled “Adopting Agile: 101 Tips for Surviving Your First Year”
Posted by David on 03/27 at 06:49 AM
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Saturday, March 01, 2008
QCon London Mar 10-14
I’ll be in London presenting at QCon on March 11th and 12th. I’m giving a 1 day Zen of Agile Management workshop on the 11th. This is the class that normally costs $750 per participant if you have Modus Cooperandi deliver it. So it’s a great opportunity to get some really useful, different and fun agile management training for a super discounted price. On Wednesday 12th, I’m presenting my kanban material in the main conference.
These sessions are essentially repeats of the material I presented in Belgium at Javapolis last December. However, the Zen of Agile Management class is a proper full day rather than the somewhat curtailed 3 hour session I gave in Belgium.
I’m looking forward to being back in London for the first time in about 5 years. But I’m not looking forward to the prices and the exchange rate 
Update: Some blog comments from an Italian attendee at my 1 day tutorial… QCon (parte 1)
Update: Adam Shimali votes me Best Talk of QCon London 2008
Update: QCon Summary on InfoQ Takeaway Points and Lessons Learned
Posted by David on 03/01 at 12:35 PM
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