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What is an acceptable amount of time that a business process or model is in place before we can challenge the assumptions and basis for it? Maybe this would be a good exam question in a MBA class. Answers are sure to vary and elicit a number of opinions. But I would answer that as soon as a process is in place, it’s fair game for challenges. Every day I think about finding more efficient ways to accomplish tasks or even eliminating processes that don’t add value to the goal of the organization.
The most successful process challenges are sourced from measured results. If the results aren’t what we expect …Continue reading >>
I don’t like process waste.
Who does? But how many of us really try to change processes to eliminate or reduce waste? In my experience this is a tough topic, and I dare say an unwelcome one, most of the time. The problem is that in an organization processes are tied to job existence and security. So the people in charge of setting the processes and administering them really don’t see the incentive to make adjustments.
I’m nearing my 20th year of software development experience, so I’ve observed and talked to many practitioners about software development process philosophies and techniques. Process waste starts to build when the people within the …Continue reading >>
What’s the most powerful step in a software development process? It’s not uncommon for analysts to label steps in a process. The critical path, bottlenecks, waste, and non-essential steps come to mind. So I would say that common wisdom agrees that all steps in a process do not hold equal weighting of importance. Maybe there isn’t a single most powerful step in the software development process you follow or maybe it depends on the context of the situation.
For what it’s worth, a few weeks ago it occurred to me that the act of estimating was perhaps the most powerful step. Estimating is completed at the ground level, by …Continue reading >>
November 11th, 2011 | | Tags: change, crazyI sat the in the office of a colleague not long ago and made a comment about how I thought a particular company procedure was too bureaucratic. We’ve all been there. Maybe you haven’t voiced it out-loud, but you’ve surely thought it. My point was that it wasn’t necessary to go through all this “stuff” to get to real objective of the process. It was a case where checking a box on a to-do list had become greater than what you were trying to achieve.
But what came next was one of those life stopping moments. My colleague said “What? Do you think you can change it?”. It was said …Continue reading >>
This is about IT and Business alignment. I’m fortunate enough to have worked in two different functional areas of a business: IT and Marketing. I can say with 100% confidence that business owners and stakeholders of software releases should be more concerned and involved in the IT release management process. The typical release process covers areas such as requirements specification, feature prioritization, business case modeling, and go-live deployment communication. It’s a set of tasks intended to oversee the requirements, development, testing, and deployment of software releases. Sounds very IT, but it should be a shared business process.
Release management is about adding value. Release Management is also about how IT …Continue reading >>
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