Does this seem familiar? Months before a deadline, the team is relaxed and responds to problems with: “Don’t worry!  We’ve got months to deal with that!”  As months turn into weeks, issues get addressed along the way, but some of the really hard problems continue to hang around. Finally, when the deadline is days away, […]

At the beginning of the innovation funnel, concept development is the most creative and exciting stage of new product development.  As discussed in one of my early blog posts, it is critical to have an understanding of what the product will be before rushing off and trying to build it.  But what do you do […]

The following comment was submitted on one of my blog articles.  It’s quite a rant about Agile, so I thought it was worth addressing as a full post. Agile is not always implemented in a good way or at the point in the life of an application/product where it can be useful and not disruptive. […]

A real conversation I had two weeks ago: Executive: “What project management method do you use?  Please don’t tell me it’s Scrum.” Me: “Actually, we are Agile and use Scrum.” Executive: “Oh, no! I have seen so many Scrum projects go bad!” Other Executive: “Well, this is more of a hybrid project…” Me: “We could […]

Over the last couple of months, we have had quite a few conversations about how to create an innovative, creative environment for our team and in our company. It all started when the Creative Director for our project circulated a 2008 Harvard Business Review article on How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity.  This article has circulated […]

Have you ever felt that your to-do list was longer than what you can possibly get done?  Or your product had a ton of features that need to be developed but it still needs to be shipped way too soon?   We often respond to this pressure by trying to do more, often at the same […]