Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

There is a carving above the portico of the 17th century Japanese mausoleum of the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. In this carving are depicted three wise monkeys in the representation of a sacred stable: Mizaru who covers his eyes and sees no evil; Mikazuru who covers his ears and hears no evil, and; Mazaru who covers his mouth and speaks no evil.

In today's -- we hope -- improving economy, business executives are interested in getting the greatest value for their expenditures and in reducing overall costs. With the emphasis on innovation and creativity, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that agile project management and software development (APMSD) can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line.

During the 1980s, my biggest client was a telephone company. I remember one day talking to a top executive with this company about what he considered to be his most serious technology problem. He didn't even think about it, he just blurted out: "The billing system by a long ways. We can create new telecommunication products much faster than we can figure out how to bill for them."

In the mid-1990s, a company named Zeos assembled PCs in my home state of Minnesota. I was impressed when Zeos was named as a finalist for the Malcolm Baldrige Award because competing for this quality award is more or less the equivalent of a software company trying to reach CMM Level 5.