Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.

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Insight

Best practices are prescriptive, and Agile development opposes prescription. So, in this sense, there are no Agile best practices. Managers faced with a need to impose new processes are always in search of guidance, however, and need to know that they are doing what they have set out to do -- or at least are on track to do so. Guidance, whether it is called "best practices," "good things to do," or "useful approaches," is still necessary.

I've written multiple articles and given numerous presentations on the problems with establishing targets for your measures of improvement. It's worth reiterating what's wrong with them, though, because if you haven't tried using targets, chances are you will.

Abstract

The success of enterprises depends upon their ability to define, prioritize, and execute mission-critical projects successfully. Project management is essential, but which project managers (PMs) best serve the organization?

A common aphorism suggests that "good project managers always get projects done on time and on budget." This is simplistic and propagates a destructive and dangerous misconception. Imagine a project manager working on a project that is likely to complete on time and on budget.

Recently there has been a spate of negative financial news in the big IT space. In some respects, this is not exactly new news. Companies like HP and Dell have had financial problems for some time, but now more mainstream organizations like Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft are all reporting falling revenues.

The world around your company has changed. What does the Internet in general -- and the latest trends of cloud computing and Big Data in particular -- mean for knowledge about your customers? The core of these changes is the amount of connectivity we now have, as individuals and as a society.

There is no question that analytics has been undergoing significant upheaval as traditional BI, advanced analytics, and Big Data have come together. As we have pointed out in previous Advisors, recent attention has focused upon the velocity component, and application to real-world processes.

The economy is dragging. Even the Chinese have downgraded the US dollar. Businesses have shuttered their doors entirely over the latest words from Washington. Watch the news lately?