Tag Archives: organisation

Offshore Development Anti-Patterns

Cost of connection, Group intercommunication formula: n(n − 1) / 2

“The Mythical Man Month” – Fred Brooks, 1975

Like most people I am currently working from home. The Corona pandemic is upon us and everything has changed. When we emerge from these hard times, we will see a new normal. I hope this new normal can also be better.

Because of the situation, our development teams are now 100% distributed, an unwanted but interesting experiment to study. Suddenly we are more equal, there’s no onsite and offshore, everyone is alone.

This post is about offshore development, or rather some learnings and “don’ts” from my own experience from the past seven years, through different setups. Continue reading →

Challenging the Enterprise

“You don’t need to fire people and hire new people: you need to create an environment where people can learn” – Jez Humble

How would you describe your typical working week? This was mine: taking a deep breath outside the main entrance Monday morning – “Attack!” and then tumbling out  Friday evening.

But after almost two years, my colleague and partner in enterprise battle and I agreed, we could be proud of what we had accomplished.

Continue reading →

From Push to Pull, My Summary

I have chosen to write about From Push to Pull because I think it’s one of the most important as well as difficult shifts to make in an organisation. You can find signs of a push culture in many areas and on many different levels: that’s why I think it’s critical to start change here.

Basically, it’s only about whether you assign tasks to people or let them pick up work when they’re ready. Can’t be that difficult or important, right?

Well, I think it defines the workplace. Here are some typical characteristics in different areas. Continue reading →

From Push to Pull, Lesson 2: Ownership

In August, I started a new journey and also a new blog series: From Push to Pull covers my first observations and reflections at my new job. The first post is about communication: how basic habits negatively impact a workplace and contribute to create a Push system. This second post is about the importance of Ownership.

The Observation

Our product has received seriously negative customer feedback for a long time. One could therefore expect devoted engagement and a strong drive, but it wasn’t there. I wondered why? Continue reading →