Leadership Insights Blog by Peter Alkema

Top 3 takeaways: Agile environments in large organisations are unique and require effective leadership from management Management operates on transactional leadership; creates conflicts with Agile principles of empowerment It is possible for Agile teams to influence upwards; it is possible for management to adopt Agile successfully Slide 1 – Leadership is everything that comes to mind when …

“Leadership and Agile” – My zero-text slides from Scrum Gathering 2015 Read More »

Three more ingredients for the secret sauce of a “mind blowing” event; team coaching through the night, exec sponsorship (and exec dragons) and world class tech support. Last week the second FNB Codefest saw 250 developers converge for a multi-day sprint to work on over 40 business sponsored ideas of which the winner was a kids …

FNB CodeFest: Highlights from the coolest IT sprint in the FirstRand Group – Part 2 Read More »

“I was blown away by the energy and progressive thinking … world leading … streets ahead”; these comments from a business colleague after our second FNB CodeFest last week, read on to see why he felt that way. No matter how well you plan something or bring an expert team together, there’s a special magic …

FNB CodeFest: Highlights from the coolest IT sprint in the FirstRand Group – Part 1 Read More »

It was all about collaboration, ideas taking shape, latest technology and techies talking shop; a perfect day out of the office in other words. One of the ways we made this codeFest bigger than the previous one was a full day set aside for setting up technical environments. This time we made sure that all the …

FNB codeFest Day 1: Successful Team Set Up Read More »

Our IT department recently took a spinning class at work; it boosted our heart rates and illustrated a powerful concept of teams. The link between exercise and knowledge work is well established; stay healthy and your productivity should be higher. The general sense of wellbeing that accompanies regular exercise has also been shown to improve results. …

Spinning our way to IT health Read More »

Day 0 of the second FNB codeFest was held recently on Spring Day; our theme was the green shoots of ideation. It’s been said that Thomas Edison figured out 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb; all his attempts still contributed to the one that changed the world. Fintech ideation is a lot about disruptive thinking to find …

FNB codeFest Kicks Off on Spring Day Read More »

It’s the difference between thriving and surviving; big business and government also have a crucial role to play. I participated in a panel debate at the Innovation Summit in Cape Town today where we discussed the importance of “enabling ecosystems for innovation.” As a banker I had already been told earlier in the day that …

Do techpreneurs need an ecosystem that supports innovation? Read More »

Prototyping new technology is exciting and important but speeding up current projects is equally valuable to business. A colleague emailed me this week about the next FNB codeFest which is being held 28 Sept – 2 Oct. She explained her team was keen to get involved but it would put strain on a big release that was …

Codefests should also accelerate in-flight projects Read More »

Rewards are fun and easy to give out but do they really motivate coders to write better software?  The biggest hackathon prize money so far was $1m which was awarded to a team of 2 at a Salesforce.com event. It was later disputed because they were found to have worked on their app for a year beforehand. …

Codefests: bigger prizes = better solutions? Read More »

Avoid a case of too many hammers and not enough nails with structured ideation before your event. We all know how it works, some IT departments love a certain technology and every problem can be tailor made to reverse fit the pre-built, pre-decided solution. There is one hammer and everything becomes a nail, in fact often people …

How to get business value from codefests Read More »

Also known as the management style of leadership, its principles and Agile’s seem at odds but does it really matter? Self-organising teams, building projects around individuals, giving them the environment they need and trusting them to get the job done. These are some concepts found in the principles of the Agile Manifesto, the widely accepted founding document …

Transactional leadership and Agile; conflict or contrast? Read More »

Teach more coding, get more programmers – is it that simple or are we sacrificing quality for quantity? Becoming an employed computer programmer no longer requires lengthy formal education at the tertiary level. You can teach yourself on the internet, primary schools in the UK are introducing it and it’s becoming part of the core …

Coding and Education; bridging the gap or walking a tightrope? Read More »