Year: 2025
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Stop Blaming Teams: See the System
Delivering software is hard. I often see companies undertake large, complex projects that span multiple years and involve hundreds of people. Then, when things deviate from the original plan, managers start finger-pointing at their teams and say the reason for the problems is how teams are “not collaborating,” or they “lack ownership,” or “aren’t aligned.”…
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There’s No One Right Way
Every decision in Agile carries a cost. There is no single “right” way to build products or organize teams; each choice comes with a hidden set of trade-offs. Recognizing Hidden Trade-offs in Agile Practices Agile teams often select practices with a specific goal in mind, overlooking the less obvious consequences. For example, escalating a technical…
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Better Planning with Two-Sided Dependencies
Every year, teams invest massive effort in annual plans that typically fail for one key reason: dependencies. Detailed timelines, careful estimates, and beautiful roadmaps all unravel once work begins and unforeseen issues with dependencies arise. Plans are always imperfect, and estimates are always off, but in large organizations, where delivery requires multiple teams and services,…
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Navigating the AI Shift With the Wardley Doctrine
The speed at which AI coding agents help teams develop new features breaks the old models of work. If the bottleneck is no longer coding, then we need to focus our attention elsewhere. There’s always a bottleneck, and it will either move upstream or downstream of the coding activity. As the bottleneck shifts from developer…
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AI Transformations Are Hard-Agile
Many claims and stories are circulating about AI accelerating development, with promises of compressing a week’s worth of work into just a few hours or an afternoon. In large organizations, however, individual speed rarely translates into the faster delivery of customer value. For two decades, Agile methods have championed optimizing the entire value stream—identifying bottlenecks,…
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Unmasking the Invisible Overhead of Meetings
A meeting’s cost extends far beyond its scheduled time. In fact, the full, hidden cost is rarely considered and often eats up the rest of your day. Every meeting creates a hidden ripple effect that affects everyone who is forced to attend. Instead of spending their time focused on delivering value, Agile teams often find…
Flow Focused 