The agile software movement suggested that we break down the barriers between business folks and IT folks so they can work more together. When you try to scale agile, it gets complex, process-heavy, and inefficient. I set before you a world where we’re all opportunists. What’s more, in this world…

Communication crosses all the boundaries of our lives. It includes how we use our voice — the tone, volume, and pace at which we speak. The holistic aspect of Communication makes the process dynamic. Effective Communication depends on our ability to be present. Years of experience developing software don’t translate…

A story is always something that the business values. Think of a story as a thin vertical slice through the horizontal layers of the system. Quantifying the business value can be informal. User Stories make the team focus on how the product will behave rather than how it will be…

To write Code that’s easy to change, we need to follow a couple of heuristics. Changes do not create unrelated side effects. Small changes in requirements suggest small code changes. …

When you start modeling events, it forces you to think about the system’s behavior instead of its structure. Domain events represent the state in time of a business process. Customer interactions determine at a higher level what is essential to the business. Events are defined based on customer-facing interactions. …

Developers have “passing tests,” but product managers do not. Product managers view velocity and output as their key performance indicators. A mismatch between prioritization rigor (deciding what gets worked on) and validation rigor (choosing if it was the right thing to work on). Prioritization rigor is designed only to temper…

The rules are simple: Teams can add or remove members using consent. Members can join or leave teams with reasonable notice. And members can manage their bandwidth (i.e., hold many roles). Open positions are shared, and members can “apply” by meeting with other team members, discussing the work, and sharing…

Bureaucracies are no match for complexity. They can’t handle the surprises we face every day, and worse, they’ll never surprise us with an unexpected breakthrough. This brings us to one of the most important things leaders and teams need to internalize: our way of working is made up. This is…

Corporations want share prices to move only up and to the right. They need to move the needle now, which means revenue or earnings growth. Executives are compensated in stock to align their interests with those of shareholders. They all fall victim to a kind of collective quarterly myopia. …