Recently I found another cool video. Again on TED. This video is about an exercise called "The Marshmallow Challenge". In eighteen minutes, teams of four must build the tallest freestanding structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape,...
Yesterday we had our seminar Lean & Agile IT. At this seminar we explained that Lean principles and Agile practices are complementary and can lead to better results. We not only applied these principles and practices to product development (like Scrum), but also...
My latest whitebook is published today. It's a Dutch paper (original title: 'Meten is weten: betere IT resultaten met Lean Six Sigma DMAIC'). As usual I'll post an English translation soon. I'm trying to point out that sometimes it's better to stop theorizing and...
The first answer to this question is.... 'quality build in'. The Toyota philosophy knows the concept of Poka-yoke, 'mistake proofing a device by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur'. Poka-yoke is a means of building quality into...
I've added two new 'cool videos' to the sidebar. How great leaders inspire action (presentation by Simon Sinek, TEDxPuget Sound, Sep 2009) A great and inspiring presentation about leadership. If you think this presentation is only about marketing and selling stuff,...
As we all know, projects are complex. That applies even more to ICT projects. The problem with complexity is that it creates unpredictability. We do not like unpredictability because both customer and supplier want to have a successful business case and need to know...
I've seen it again and again, the same business & IT anti-patterns in organisations with an internal IT department. According to Wiki, an anti-pattern 'is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem, but is ineffective and/or counterproductive in...
Three words: Gemba, Kaikaku, Kaizen. Gemba means 'the place truth can be found'. Kaikaku means 'radical improvement'. Kaizen means 'gradual improvement'. Projects are all about change. Usually we're talking about a large change (Kaikaku). That's why it's a project: a...
PRINCE2 prescribes incorporating 'Lessons Learned' into the project's processes. There's the post project Lessons Learned within the process 'Closing a Project', but also the transition from one stage (iteration) to another is an excellent opportunity to learn from...
In most projects some amount of analysis is required. With an agile method like Scrum there's no room for a separate analysis phase. It is assumed that analysis can be done concurrently with design and build activities. This is often true when the business process is...