Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

One would be hard pressed to decide which incident represents the worst example of enterprise risk (mis)management practice since 2010 given the surfeit of eminently eligible contenders in which to choose. Among the nominees is BP PLC.

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding what's better for mobile development: building native apps designed to run specifically on select mobile platforms and OSs (e.g., Apple iOS, Android-based devices, BlackBerry, Windows 8) or using dynamic Web-based technologies (e.g., HTML5, JavaScript, mobile Web frameworks) to bu

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.

-- J.R.R. Tolkien

While agile methods remain at the forefront in popularity and value, development effort is only a fraction of the overall time, money, and effort spent in maintaining systems.

The intersection between agile and mobile development is a natural one, grounded in the similarities between the demands of each. Mobile apps are generally small, frequently updated from an apps store, motivated by clear process requirements, and released almost immediately.

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him.

In my work with CEOs and other corporate executives, the question I get asked the most is (paraphrased): What don't I even know to ask? My response is that most CEOs, on the morning after launching an agile initiative, wake up with several concerns, most of them related to what I call the "five fears of an agile leader." These can be identified as the fear of: