Introducing xodiac XPRS on xprs.xodiac.ca, a solution designed to address project delays, cost overruns, and quality concerns

Introducing xodiac XPRS on xprs.xodiac.ca, a solution designed to address project delays, cost overruns, and quality concerns

Musings about Agile Thinking

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Gino Marckx
October 13, 2023
Reading time: 4 min

When talking about agile practices, the distinction between projects and products often comes up. The idea is that the limited lifespan of projects tends to be pushed onto the delivery team, which leads to the team being assembled at the onset and dismantled when the project completes. Agile practitioners advocate for a product view, where teams are dedicated to a specific product and deliver incremental value at a regular cadence, across initiative lifespans. This usually works really well, and I too favour a similar way of working in most cases. However, I have recently seen various examples of this idea being misinterpreted, which creates a situation in which teams struggle, largely due to their setup.

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We made it! Over the past several weeks, we’ve discussed the benefits of improving business agility and the obstacles that can get in the way. What have we learned? In good business agility fashion, here is a summary of the topics we’ve covered:

  • Business agility practices encourage building a learning organization.

  • The sooner you learn from your customers, the quicker you can verify you are on the right track.

  • People come first as business agility is first and foremost a shift in mindset.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the benefits and obstacles and tie everything all together.

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Whether individually or for an organization we have a tendency to spread our focus to multiple projects at the same time. The illusion of efficiency this creates is fulfilling. After all, it is fun to start something new, we get a rush of engagement and learning. Whereas finishing a task comes with much more peril. If it is a task we enjoyed, we’ll be sorry to have finished, and if it is one we hate, we’ll want to find something else to start on. While starting a new task gives us a sense of achievement and moving forward, in fact, it slows us down.

In this week’s article on business agility, we will be exploring how confusing having lots of work underway with moving quickly. Put another way, confusing speed with focus. This is important as the sooner you can deliver value to your customers, the sooner you can learn. In turn, this prevents teams from reaping the benefits of business agility practices, such as reducing delivery costs and increasing revenue. Below we discuss three ways in...

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