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Mapping Psychological Safety

Mapping Psychological Safety

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David Anderson has published a book called The Value Flywheel Effect. It’s about creating adaptive organizations to drive business results and modernize technical practices and cloud adoption. In his talk at DOES22 Vegas, he shared the Serverless adoption story at Liberty Mutual using Wardley Maps.  In one map titled “creating space for innovation”, I was stunned (perhaps shocked) to see “Psychological Safety” sitting on the cusp of the commodity column of the Wardley Map. I thought, “Wait! what? How can…

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Q&A: How to Scale with no Alignment on Value or Culture.

Q&A: How to Scale with no Alignment on Value or Culture.

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It’s time to answer another question that got voted up (in Slido.com) by other attendees after my talk at the Prodacity Conference. “How can we scale in an organization with no alignment on value or culture?” This is quite the question! Many large books could be written on this topic. My initial thought was, “I don’t think you can”. Upon further reflection I think there are tools available to tackle issues related to misalignment on value and culture. Tools that…

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Q&A: How to Convince Management to allow first steps?

Q&A: How to Convince Management to allow first steps?

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Prodacity conference attendees asked me a bunch of great questions at the end of my talk. I didn’t have time to answer all the questions live and decided to answer them in blog posts. One question that got voted up (in Slido.com) by other attendees was: “How to convince management to allow first steps (ex: lower WIP, allocate capacity for quality)?” Convincing others to do things differently means asking them to change the way they work – a difficult task…

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How to Effect Change

How to Effect Change

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The day the Obama’s were at the white house for the unveiling of their portraits, I was four blocks away attending the Prodacity conference. The conference was awesome due to many amazing speakers and a single track focus. First time on an airplane in more than three years, and first time speaking on stage at a live event, filled me with both overwhelm and relief. It felt like I needed to learn how to speak again in person and I…

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Flow Metrics: How to Get Started Measuring your Value Streams

Flow Metrics: How to Get Started Measuring your Value Streams

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In this post, I’ll cover flow metrics — why teams use them, what they are, and my tips for getting started. A balanced set of flow metrics can be a powerful tool for reflecting your reality as a team. It can also be an effective way to communicate your reality to business stakeholders, using language that means something to them. But first, here’s a quick synopsis of how I landed on the structure of this post. At the Agile2019 conference…

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Q&A with Gene Kim

Q&A with Gene Kim

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Recently, Gene Kim and I discussed my new book, Making Work Visible. GK: What is it about visual cues that make them so effective? DD: Images are easily received by the human eye, so the eye is naturally attracted to them. When used for visual cues, images, along with a few well-placed words, are quickly absorbed by the eye, making them easy to understand. We need little education to get the message. The combination of images and writing responds to our need for a nimble,…

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Trading Granite for Quiet

Trading Granite for Quiet

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This year, we celebrated Christmas with an old family favorite – spaghetti with meatballs and spareribs – cooked in a large crock-pot that consumes 18 inches of countertop space. With 16 people for dinner, space is a premium. I covered the small second kitchen sink with a cutting board and placed the crock-pot on top of it. Counter space problem solved. We use the small second kitchen sink less and less these days. Installed during a kitchen remodel years ago, when…

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Lean Agile Scotland – where elegant insight meets raw beauty

Lean Agile Scotland – where elegant insight meets raw beauty

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Lean Agile Scotland pulled it off again this year with an extraordinary utility-filled program. Exceptional keynotes, engaging workshops, and insightful presentations provided three days of mind-blowing learning at the University of Edinburgh’s, John McIntyre Conference Centre. Lean Agile Scotland is remarkable in many ways. The absent speaker lounge combined with an open area and collection of comfy chairs and couches provides an excellent hallway track for speakers and attendees to stretch their thinking and gain new insights. Reflecting on the conference…

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The Art of Lean Performance

The Art of Lean Performance

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Starting a new Lean Kanban method is fairly simple. But once the basics are in play for a while, teams can hit a plateau. Taking Lean Kanban to a higher level is sometimes rocky. This presentation shows you how to level up your Lean Kanban implementation to a system focused on flow and continuous improvement. This was the topic of my talk for DevOpsDays Austin 2017 that I unfortunately didn’t make it to, due to a head cold and stuffy right ear….

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The Aging Report – A Harbinger of Late Work

The Aging Report – A Harbinger of Late Work

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Do you get surprised by work completed late? If you want to see late work candidates, this post is for you. What might a harbinger for late work look like? One measure used to see tardy work upfront is an aging report. An aging report (sometimes referred to as a staleness report) provides a forewarning of late work. Work ages for the obvious reasons — special skills, holidays, the dentist. Work also ages from the approval of newer work and…

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