See also Agile Techniques and Workshop Techniques.

Platforms are Products

Notes from Tito’s Made Tech talk August 2020 (see also screenshots below):

  • if one team has no interface with user, turn them into platform as product where other teams are their users
  • give them physical boxes and pens and ask them to decorate them as though it was a product
  • give the users a choice - they don’t have to use the platform
  • GovPaaS are a great example of a team creating platform as a product

platforms-are-products.png

Think Big, Start Small

Notes from Tito’s Made Tech talk August 2020:

  • Think big by starting small. What’s the tiniest thing I could do today to make a difference?
  • people have a tendency to plan massive overhauls
  • this can mean you have a giant budget
  • but don’t start with the giant goal
  • eg overall goal is to decrese case load by 75%
  • start by decreasing it by 5%, or 1%, or by just one case
    • set that as your first goal
  • your plan is wrong, and you want to learn how it is wrong as early as possible
  • small posoitive effects compound, they aren’t linear
  • don’t underestimate the effect of experiencing victory
  • maintain the big vision while experiencing the small victories towards that big goal.

Effective teams

Team Topologies - keep teams small

My notes from Neil Vass (@Neil_Vass)’s lightning talk at XP Manchester about the book Team Topologies, by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais:

  • Talking about the problem many companies have, of having large numbers of small independent teams who then aren’t coordinated or joined up enough
  • An idea: Instead of having a WIP limit, have a dependency limit
  • The more external dependencies your team has in progress at any one time, the more you will grind to a halt
  • Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais
    • Neil has made his own notes
    • It’s a book, and website, and GitHub repos, and training
    • The website
    • Various useful resources referred to in the book
    • The Stream Aligned Team can partner up with the Enabling Team
    • Use Conway’s Law
    • Platform as product:
      • There’s a great 4-hour course by Manuel Pais about platform as product
      • Don’t mandate the use of your platform - let people make choices - and that will focus you on making your platform genuinely useful
    • Don’t have more than 7-9 people on a team
      • you don’t have to have all the expertise within the team - some can be external to the team.

Allow cross-pollenation between teams

Shift-Left

“Shift left” means to move things from the right hand side of your kanban (or other) board to the left - ie bring them higher up in the process / do them earlier.

Systems thinking

Handling people disagreeing

“Based on that experience, is there anything you do differently or any other considerations that would have led to a different result?”