Another Potential Outcome of Pandemic Re-Engineering: Will Agile Adoption Grow?

A core aspect of agile is the idea that if a product or service does what customers need, they will be willing to pay for. At many organizations, an agile principle of customer collaboration is key. Products can be delivered quicker by working in iterations. In multi-disciplined teams professionals work together to deliver working software. This presentation talks about the financial returns generated via an agile approach.

It may take an expert in management consulting to translate into actual behavior and decision terms such as ‘waste’ (in Lean) or ‘flow’ (in Kanban), but the results can be impactful. But how do you know if work done by your teams result in value? What does ‘maximizing value’ mean in terms of behavior and decisions? What are the different kinds of value -- and are they equal? How do you compare them?

In these days of re-imagining the very foundations of conducting business, delivering a product or services, and other challenges brought about as a result of global pandemic, we could think of "business value" as an informal term that includes all forms of positive inputs that contribute to the health and well-being of an organization in the long run. The idea that agile can be used outside of software development is growing. Darrell K. Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez of Bain:

“To create a truly agile enterprise,” in the May-June 2020 article, “The Agile C-Suite”, discuses, “the top officers—most, if not all, of the C-suite—must embrace agile principles too.”

Loyal readers of this venue recognize that agility, of course, is not a new idea. With members of the C-suite -- besides the CIO -- embracing the approach, will we see improved efficiency in other lines-of-business?

Read more at the HBR...

Remote Workers are not just more happy, but more productive

Companies that let their employees "work from anywhere and work whenever they want," end up with employees who are more loyal, more productive, and lower overhead expenses.

In a recent study, Harvard associate professor Prithwiraj Choudhury and his colleagues compared how productive, loyal, and cost-effective employees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were when they were allowed to work flexibly.

A government office was selected because it had recently implemented a wide-scale pilot program to facilitate a number of patent examiners to work remotely when they wanted, while still requiring others to remain in the office.

The results showed a 4.4 percent higher productivity among those in the pilot program, while doing the exact same work as those who were required be in the office.


Read more at:  https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-companies-benefit-when-employees-work-remotely

The Team that... Cooks together... Performs Better

Over at FastCompany, we read...

"Fun has to be part of the business when you market a lifestyle brand... What began as an informal gathering took on a more bare-knuckles edge last year after the company secured a new $7 million round of funding led by Partech Ventures in April 2015. Now two teams of on-site employees face off quarterly in what Hunter describes as an "ironless" chef cook-off using only tools found around the office..."

"Each team has roughly an hour to plan their meals and take a trip to the grocery store to find what they need, though some will forage for fresh produce right where they are," says Button cofounder Stephen Milbank. Teams get 30 seconds to pitch their finished concepts. They usually need every last one as constraints often lead to interesting or even crazy choices, like the team that used waffles instead of buns for a recent burger-and-salad cook-off.

Read more productivity tips at FC...

Poor Writing Does Not Have to Be a Cost of Doing Business

This article captures a common problem faced by institutions on a daily basis:

Poor writing creates a drag on everything you do. It functions like a tax, sapping your profits, and I can quantify it. American workers spend 22 percent of their work time reading; higher compensated workers read more. According to my analysis, America is spending 6 percent of total wages on time wasted attempting to get meaning out of poorly written material. Every company, every manager, every professional pays this tax, which consumes $396 billion of our national income. That’s more than half of what we pay for Medicare—but the poor writing tax pays for nothing but waste.

Read more here...

How Project Managers May Facilitate Software Developers

Over at Frederico Tomassetti's blog, he discusses how PMs and developers should communicate business priorities and consider technical priorities as part of the process of improving how these two professions interact, with the goal of improving a work product.

As a student of the Toyota Method, I've often looked to industrial process improvement for ideas on how to better manage teams, specifically around technology projects. But software development is not about 'manufacturing' an application. Modern management comes from the industrial revolution, and the idea of increasing production by adding labor, machines, etc. Software, to me, is still very much an artisan craft. Understanding user requirements to be functional is key -- the more detailed the requirements, the more time developers spend figuring out how to implement. Beyond this, some problems require the abstract thinking of a software engineer or architect, not just the assembly of blocks of code.

I have found that unrealistic schedules are the major cause of project failure. In the 1980s, Frederick Brooks noted in “The Mythical Manmonth” that adding staff to a project that was behind schedule only helped it to be further behind schedule. When estimating a technology project, two key components are difficult to assess: the complexity of requirements; and, the productivity levels (outputs) of the development team.

My solution is to track progress, and that means capturing data (metrics). But if information is not collected or collected so inconsistently, comparisons and trends are impossible. If no data is being collected, management has not required it. If collected inconsistently, KPIs have not been established and enforced, or standards are burdensome so they are circumvented. Productivity measurement and project management are powerful tools for planning, overseeing, and evaluating software development and maintenance projects -- the PM should guide the ship, so developers can pull the oars together.

Read more here...

Good News, Everybody! (well, bean-counters) SAAS is Deductible!

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) released an accounting standards update, which covers the fees paid for cloud computing. This is part of FASB's simplification initiative aimed at eliminating unnecessary complexity in accounting standards. In the first update, “Accounting Standards Update No. 2015-05—Intangibles—Goodwill and Other—Internal-Use Software (Subtopic 350-40): Customer’s Accounting for Fees Paid in a Cloud Computing Arrangement,” FASB noted that existing GAAP does not include explicit guidance about a customer’s accounting for fees paid in a cloud computing arrangement. These can include software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, and other similar hosting arrangements. FASB said it heard from stakeholders that the absence of explicit guidance resulted in some diversity in practice, along with unnecessary costs and complexity, in evaluating the accounting for those fees.

The guidance already exists in the FASB Accounting Standards Codification, but it's included in a subtopic applied by cloud service providers to determine whether an arrangement includes the sale or license of software. The amendments in the latest update provide guidance to customers about whether a cloud computing arrangement includes a software license.

If a cloud computing arrangement includes a software license, then FASB said the customer should account for the software license element of the arrangement consistent with the acquisition of other software licenses. If a cloud computing arrangement does not include a software license, the customer should account for the arrangement as a service contract. The guidance will not change generally accepted accounting practices GAAP for a customer’s accounting for service contracts.

Read more at... Accounting Today!