onsdag 24 november 2010

Sometimes you miss the strangest...

... last week it was Canoe.

Of all things?

Wireshark in all it's glory...

This. That.

Had a busy day today, the board meeting at the University went well and the speaker-list for Modprod 2011 is getting really close to release. From that straight back to SAAB and host a section in a training program. It’s always difficult to talk about a large subject in a very short slot but at least they know who to contact now. And then back to business which was semi-successful, but there’s always a tomorrow.


It’s interesting to observe how different personalities tackle a large scale development project. Some projects can be like inventing a new sport while playing it, without a referee. Some people go full throttle and play and try to learn as they go along, realize that without a rule-book short-cuts and quick uninformed decisions can sometimes be necessary to achieve the goal and win. Some people just sit on the ground and refuse to play until someone shows them all rules, nuances and a referee. Of course there’s a grey area in between all that black and white but sometimes I don’t really understand the person tapping out before the game even start.

måndag 22 november 2010

Think Talk

A while back I bounced a couple of mails back and forth with Tomas Sandén from our Göteborg office. I was planning to submit the outcome to a conference; I still might but not sure when.


Anyhow, I thought I’d share some of the key questions or statements we formulated. I could feed you with how I would answer them and build up a speech, but it is more interesting if you contemplate yourself. If you feel the urge to discuss them there’s always the comment box.

So the talk was going to be around team organization and improving “speed” in companies developing some type of product(s), or “industrial scrum” as I sometimes refer to it when I’m sloppy (which is a somewhat bad term since scrum per se doesn’t hold the complete answer and since industrial can give you a very incorrect mental picture).

Tomas summed up the bullets that we were sort of coming back to all the time, so here are those questions for you:
  • Can you regard scrum as an organizational pattern for teams, and as such is it strong?
  • Can you gain focus and drive in a large PD-organization by relentlessly shortening the feedback-loops and lead-times?
  • How do you balance the focus on external customer value with the need to appreciate internal ditto?
  • Is the transparency provided by Scrum enough when the development is distributed in several teams and over a longer period in time?
  • How do you balance product management - development - pre-development with minimized over-head?
  • Should the focus really be to have better control mechanism, development methods etc. than your competitors, or should it be to be able to learn faster?
  • Which have precedence and why; Quality or velocity?

 That will have to be enough for today.

Sands of time

Been difficult to find time to blog during the last couple of months, maybe it has something to do with priorities.


Last week we arranged an interesting seminar on lean and agile here in Linköping, Göteborg is still to come so go ahead and sign up on www.knowit.se/lean and be sure to ask some tricky questions.

So far the assignment at SAAB Aeronautics has been a really interesting journey. I’ve gained a lot of insight with regards to Scrum for larger industrial projects, and I’ve gained some confirmations on theories I’ve been juggling with before. Having worked with organizations and “processes” all over the scale I have to say that so far Scrum has proven, at least, to be the most fun. And when it comes to building teams and creating momentum for delivery it hasn’t really disappointed yet. Or maybe it’s because there are a lot of quite awesome engineers at SAAB?

On Wednesday it’s time for another board meeting with Modprod, http://www.modprod.liu.se/ , at Linköping University. February and conference time is closing in pretty fast so it’s time to dig in and execute all actions to bring it home.

In January we are turning a page here at Know IT Technology Management in Linköping. It will be really interesting to see how 2011 pans out, after the board of directors meeting we had together with the Göteborg and Stockholm office last week I feel a bit rejuvenated though, a slice of energy was well-needed during this exceptionally gray November.