Software agility is not business agility (Klaus, 2018). If that sounds true to you, then the rest of this post should be a fun read. If it is not, this may be challenging. It could still be a fun read. Software Agility The collection of knowledge called Agile Methods, as applied to developing valuable software, is deep and broad. Much of the variance both within communities and across communities is caused by the ambiguities in their experiences and where they’re at in their personal and leadership development. There are good reasons for the distinctions among the different forms of Agile. The Universe is whatever you say it is, so just say. Business, Busyness, Problems Have you ever participated in a[…]
Category: Technology
Marty Cagan lists four big risks in product development: value risk (will they buy it?) usability risk (can they figure out how to use it?) feasibility risk (can engineers build it?) business viability risk (can the business work with it?) Cagan’s framework is a great read. I’d like to build on and acknowledge Cagan’s ideas here. The intimate relationship Canadians have with risk Water is to fish as risk is to Canadians. If you aren’t from here, maybe you’d be in a better position to see it. There’s a skill, called inversion, that I think Canadians are pretty good at. You imagine the worst that can happen, and then you write plans to avoid those nightmare from coming true. It’s a good skill. I[…]
There’s an entire complex rooted on the idea that business plans are intelligently designed. Let’s probe that idea a bit. I enjoy Eric Beinhocker’s ideas about complexity economics. I’ve written of his ideas again and again and again. One of the most polarizing talks I’ve ever given was centred on his idea of a Library of Smith. It’s the idea that every single business plan that has ever been written, will ever be written, or can ever be written is contained in an imaginary library named after Adam Smith. Somewhere in this library is the elusive Google Business Plan from 1999. There’s also GE’s business plan for 1956. And another business plan with the letter ‘A’, repeated 99,000 times. I[…]
Canadians are a people shaped by physical and social geography. Both explain a portion of why we are who we are, and how we relate to each other. Covid-19, an executable snippet of code wrapped in protein with the sole goal of persistence, is shaping us. It has already affected our social demography. Will it change Canada’s social geography? What It Is Population density is a pretty good indicator of attitude. I can’t make the claim that it’s always causal for all people, After all, did living with 25,000 others in a square kilometre in downtown Toronto make you more conscious of mental health challenges facing the population, or were you always conscious and chose to live with others who[…]
The one pager is a beautiful tool. It’s one page. It is something that you are bringing to a persons’ mind. It contains a limited amount of language – around 300 words or less if there is a chart or many bullet points. Most people can read it in around 90 seconds, though, some can do it in 60 seconds. Those are the constraints. You use tools to achieve goals. We’ll start there, dive into each one, and I’ll conclude with a few experiences. Goals Three common goals are to persuade, to declare, or to engage. Persuasion is often about convincing oneself, another, or a group to form a belief. Declaration is often about sharing or proclaiming a decision, fact,[…]
Is what is happening in analytics, in industry, an evolution or a revolution? What is Analytics is the science of data analysis. Those who practice analytics self-identify as analyst, digital analyst, marketing scientist, data engineer, researcher, among many others. Tukey (1962, The Future of Data Analysis, The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, (33), 1) called them all practitioners. The goal of the practitioner depends on their context. That context largely, but not always, depends on the state of knowledge, state of the culture, or sometimes, normatively, the state of maturity, of the group they belong to. Large organizations can have a large amount of difference within them. It’s not uncommon for an operations department to be extremely mature and for its[…]
In this post, I’ll outline some of the best parts about product managing data science. Data science is the creation of product from data, requiring a blend of the skills of technology, statistics, and business. Product Management brings and keeps product in the world, requiring a blend of the skills of technology, user experience, and business. All of the challenges of product management appear in data science. And then some. The Knowledge Funnel The Knowledge Funnel is a concept introduced by Roger Martin in Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage (2009). At the top of the funnel, you got mysteries. It would seem that there are an uncountable number of mysteries. In the middle, you have heuristics,[…]
Upon reflecting on 2019 and the decade that was, I’ll ask, perhaps more competition is needed? There is no Call To Action, nor a verdict. It’s an open ended question. On one hand, competition is amazing for the consumer in the short and long runs, and fantastic for innovation in the medium to long run. When companies compete, you win. And they invest in R&D. On the other hand, competition inhibits the ability of a small set of firms to corner and extract the maximum amount of rent. A lack of competition is fantastic for the shareholders in the short run, and absolutely terrible for consumers and society in the medium and long run. On balance, I believe that competition[…]
The main point is that it’s worth trying to predict technology triggers and asking what those triggers mean. There is value in answering the question so what? A secondary argument is that questions beginning with what if? can be very interesting, but far less reliable than so what? What is a Technology Trigger? The term Technology Trigger is from Gartner’s Hype Cycle. They defined it as: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven. Gartner Research The term has been deprecated in favour of the term innovation trigger. However, as an owner of the hardcover book Managing The Hype Cycle (2008), I[…]
There are at least two systems of achieving productivity growth: path dependence and disruption. What if there is a third way? This post unpacks that paragraph and explores ways through. It will start with explaining lock in and path dependence. We’ll cover the application narrow machine intelligence in a very narrow industry. It will end with a small scenario and a few what ifs. Lock In Consider banner advertising. This is a relatively old industry. Its roots predate the Internet by at least a couple hundred years. It may have started thousands of years ago. It starts out with a person with a problem. They need to get the word out about their product or service. Reframed, they need to[…]