The Mantras

What do Lean Budgeting, Lean Systems Design, Agile development, DevOps, Release on Demand, Business Agility, Trust, Lean Portfolio Management, Learning Organisation have in common other than being buzz words, and off course really valuable techniques for running a development organisation?

I love to simplify. I guess it is because of my lazy nature, I mean, no one want to waste valuable brain capacity that can be used to watch Netflix series en masse, right? So, two mantras have, for me, become more and more important lately when it comes to simplify what I do all day. They actually started to form years ago and now when I have concentrated on working as an organisational consultant for a year, it becomes obvious how simple, yet important, they are.

First Mantra: "Do everything in collaboration"
When it comes to developing stuff there is nothing that beats a good Team! One plus one is always more than two. Regardless if you are balancing a budget, working on prioritising a product portfolio, as an architect with system design or in a development Team producing SW or HW products, the quality of the work will probably be better. If you are a project manager or in another leading position you will get a better result if you practice pair-work. There is a great chance that it is going to be more fun as well, so start now!

Second Mantra: "Do everything continuously"
If you apply a cadence with regular checkpoints to your work it fosters a learning environment and allows improvement. Continuous Learning, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Budgeting, Continuous Demos, Lean Portfolio Management. The list can go on. It is actually the same thinking as with working with small batches, but with the cadence added. So no rocket science. Just do it!

The great thing is that if you stick to these two mantras you will enable so much more that organisations today lack. Trust, speed, agility just to mention a few. The trick is to do it in collaboration and continuously.