Who owns quality for your product? Whenever I ask that question, I am often met with one or more of the following reactions: A blank stare “Testing/Quality Assurance/Quality Control, of course!” “Management.” (lots of variations on that) “Creative/technical leadership.” So, maybe the better question is: Who defines quality?

As projects wrap-up and start-up, you may have the challenge of accommodating end-of-project vacations, hiring new team members and reforming teams to best meet the needs of the new project.  Teams should be kept together as projects move in and out, but that is not always possible, particularly in some industries. To help you visualize […]

“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr After reading my post on how not to implement Agile, a friend asked me to write a post about discipline and discuss whether it […]

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. […]