Writing Archive

159 posts

Selling Agile to Senior Management

The best way to promote Agile to senior management is to explain its numerous benefits and cost and waste reduction methods. Once key players in the organization are made aware of Agile’s benefits, it essentially sells itself. And, the best way to sell a methodology is to demonstrate its value by delivering quantifiable and visible business benefits, but to even get there, you first need to find a project that you can implement using Agile, and this is a challenge in itself. The process of selling usually starts with a presentation to the key decision makers, which should at least cover the following areas:

Six Sigma and Software Engineering & Reliability

I recently finished reading the book "What is six-sigma?" by Peter Pande, and Larry Holpp. In terms of Software Engineering, Six Sigma is much more than a specific analysis of software reliability. It is a quality improvement framework and mindset focused on the measurement of process variation as the culprit for lack of quality. I want to point out that the term "six sigma" when used in conjunction with software reliability, has little or nothing to do with statistics, with distributions, with their moments, etc. It is a buzzword and will remain a buzzword until such a time as it is defined in statistically correct ways. ** The real Sense for Six Sigma** Six Sigma as the name implies stands for six standard deviations from the mean. Sigma is a statistical measure of variability around the average. The concept of Six Sigma comes from reliability engineering prediction of system or component failure probabilities. For example: the wearout time of a component may be normally distributed - that is mean - standard deviation. So, we want a component having a very small of failure before its design life. If we set this at one sigma from the mean we get ~80% reliability, 2 sigmas gives us ~95%, 3 sigmas ~99%, and so on. Six Sigma gives us ~99.9997% relaibility - near perfect. Or in other ways 3.4 defects per million.

Staying Ahead of the Game: Innovating with Systems Thinking, Adapting with Modern Management, and Scaling for Digital Transformation

Effective strategic management is not just a buzzword but a crucial component of success for companies like yours. However, several significant concerns challenge these organizations and can hinder their growth and profitability. From resource allocation to intense competition, these obstacles require careful planning and execution. To ensure your company remains at the forefront of your industry, addressing these challenges head-on is not just a choice but a necessity. Let's explore these issues further.

Stepping ahead into 'trust' based learning

This is the continuation of previous post "Building Learning Communities". As we move into the mechanism of how learning could be further improved, using some techniques, that would challenge the learners, as well as, the coach; we find that one thing that  binds these two at the coaching crucial stage is "trust". Trust. Trust is often not easily obtainable, and neither can it be forced upon to it. Especially within those organizations where focus is more on people and individuals rather than on processes and methodologies, there within those organizations it becomes a critical success factor. In my experience, I've seen teams at times being disintegrated from their immediate focus due to lack of trust between team members, and thus creating a mindset gap in learning for not only within the team itself but within themselves. This has a recursive effect on the organization that is trying to move forward. It hampers any success for the group as a whole. So how do we encourage 'trust' based learning? This is an important question, and mostly missed by a big margin by a lot of individuals. This stems from the simple fact that the organization, which is looking to be structured, and learned wants to learn are actually structured. Whether that learning organization promotes such a healthy culture and builds on that sort of environment. Whether there are tools and people available, who would fuel and enhance that learning experience. There are different ways to look at such a problem. Mostly organizations try to accommodate with what's available to them or simply put what's within their reach as they tend to maximize on their existing resources. In the end,  all matters come back to the fact of trust. Organizations go with people whom they believe in and have their trust on, and someone who's the person would have their best interest; therefore, it is always recommended having that person from within the team. So essentially, this needs to come from the organization within, and usually should be top down. Why? Cause then everyone pays attention to what the management has to say. Sounds crass, but that's the reality of the world we operate in today. Doesn't matter how less of a hierarchical your organization is. Next, I'll talk about  Learning Communities & Organizational Preview.

The Open Source & Web 2.0 - Overused and overrated

I believe in open source. But, there have been too many events around open source in past couple of years that it is hard to believe that open source is not another commercialized entity. Companies posing themselves and based on open source technology in turn aren't really open source in their products and offerings, and this brings an interesting and questionable point at times 'what's cooking behind those open source company doors?'. How many companies can we list that work towards the actual cause and benefit of open source, and also serve the underlying principals and foundation of open source? Most companies today are focused on how to make money off of the open source buzz, get funded and attract venture capitalists.

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