Category Archives: knowledge creation

What is the problem set?

You have probably heard the recommendation: solve the right problem. Often in new product development, we think of this as the customers’ problem. And then we have ideas, from Lean and elsewhere, such as: root cause analysis – the idea that the customer presents with a symptom(s), but the root cause is not so obvious […]

Creativity and Process

Here is a good quote: Now I have to tell you something, and I mean this in the best and most inoffensive way possible: I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign […]

Joe’s Agile Release Planning – New Version

While I was writing the book on Agile Release Planning I was posting free versions. The book is now available here: https://leanpub.com/joesagilereleaseplanning   But it is no longer free (except to class participants).  (Although I frequently have deals on LinkedIn or Twitter.) I hope you will leave comments or send me comments or questions.

Is release planning worth it?

In a word: Yes, if done professionally. Next, let’s acknowledge that it is a fair question.  At some point, if release planning costs too much versus the benefits, then it is a waste.  But we do not find that the ratio is nearly that bad. How is release planning, and release plan refactoring… useful? A […]

Enabling Specification

This is a “just enough, just in time” concept.  As some of you know, just-in-time (JIT) was one of the first names for what we now call Lean. Just enough documentation to enable the implementers to implement it, delivered ‘just in time.’ This is closely related to the “Definition of Ready” or DOR concept.  Which […]

“Ozymandias” – Creativity can take some courage

It is hard sometimes to be creative, to create.  We wonder, will our creation ever survive.  I have spoken already of a book called The Courage to Create by Rollo May. Here is a short poem by Shelley, Ozymandias: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of […]

Creativity

A friend was reading Daniel Pink’s book Drive. And so I started reading it. I had this series of thoughts. First, I have for a long time thought that the key thing about our jobs is creativity.  Takeuchi and Nonaka call it knowledge creation, but to me it remains essentially the same thing.  And it […]

Creation myth

It is Sunday morning as I write. I like to read different bibles, from different cultures. It is my intuition that while they are all different, they are also all trying to give us pointers towards the truth. Sometimes the pointers are a bit rusty and bent, but if we use a bit of imagination […]

Innovation’s most important question

Steve Denning (a very interesting guy) tweeted about this article. The question (in the article) is: Is there a better way? Please read it. Nice story behind it. (Steve is a big proponent of stories. Google his books.) It’s actually useful if you want your team to be innovative. (You do want your team to […]

Complex Adaptive Systems

Self-organization, which I just wrote about, is only one of the ideas that contributes to the success of complex adaptive systems. While I am not convinced CAS (complex adaptive systems) have been fully figured out, the idea has a lot to add. In fact, the idea in science is that E=MC(2) is only a working […]