Business stakeholders want projects to deliver fast. They often come to the project team with a clear view of the solution, expecting a quick start and not leaving much room or time for challenging and proposing alternatives. However, this mindset carries an important risk: building the solution does not guarantee business value.
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lean thinking
August 5, 2020
Why and how to challenge your MVPs
Ah, MVPs, or Minimum Viable Products. I haven’t seen many projects without them in the last few years. Yet still, I haven’t seen project success rates going up significantly either, despite what MVPs promise: building the smallest thing that will bring success. What are we doing wrong? What can we improve?
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October 4, 2019
Successful innovation: from plan to process
A personal definition of innovation that I regularly use is this:
Innovation is doing new things in a context of uncertainty.
By this definition, the process of innovation follows an uncertain path. You cannot know up front whether or not you will be successful.
January 15, 2019
Interview with Kathy Berkidge
Many organisations are experimenting with applying agile techniques. However, without a good understanding of the agile mindset, this often does not lead to the expected results. At the latest BBC Conference, I talked to Kathy Berkidge, who frequently speaks on agile and how it enables good collaboration. She also discusses the relation of agile and mindfulness, which is maybe a bit unexpected but can be a big enabler!
November 21, 2018
Lean and agile business analysis — where to start?
Lean and agile have become a thing in most organisations. They have a significant impact on how projects are run. As a consequence, they heavily influence what people expect from business analysis.
But what exactly is lean business analysis? Can and should analysis work be performed in an agile way?
June 20, 2018
Risks and safety: two sides of innovation
When I recently cut a slice of brown bread for breakfast, I discovered a white blob in the middle. Strange. Yet I ate it, and you know what? I did not die. Seriously, I didn’t even get sick.
We really need to be ok with having more white blobs when innovating.
May 31, 2018
The truth is out there
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome in a lot of organisations is getting started with early customer validation. But it’s not so much an organisational issue, it’s mostly a personal issue. Do you have what it takes to get out and talk to potential customers?
May 16, 2018
Lean strategy execution and the BA’s new roles
Many executives admit they struggle with turning their strategy into a business reality. What can business analysis do about it?
November 29, 2017
Are you also iterating towards failure?
So your team is working hard, iterating on your product, getting customer feedback along the way and turning it into a great solution. But are you sure you are going in the right direction?
May 4, 2017
First test, then invest
During trainings and workshops, I often tell about the Zappos example to explain the concepts of hypotheses and cheap validation. How many pairs of shoes did Zappos have in stock when they first launched their web site? Zero.
One time, after the Zappos example, I got an interesting question, showing how hard it is to grasp the essence of hypothesis discovery and validation.
