The humble build-up chart – communicating with stakeholders

Many of us work in environments where the question “when will you be done with X?” matters. Some of the examples I have seen recently are: The business team wants a certain set of functional enhancements as well as performance & scalability improvements. Can we get both done? Will one need to take a back seat to the other? A customer has a “deployment window” that we want to hit with...

I Want Agile – But I Want Certainty As Well

Today I am reflecting on how difficult it is for individuals and organizations to deal effectively with uncertainty and ambiguity, and how the underlying belief in the possibility of certainty has such a strong hold on us. Examples of that desire for certainty that have appeared on my radar over the last few years include: A customer requested that a project be performed using an agile...