Leadership Insights Blog by Peter Alkema

The Agile Manifesto is not the 10 commandments, it’s principles; much like 50 shades of kid’s parties…. what? Software development is essentially a creative process requiring far more social psychology than many development methodologies allow for, even Agile ones. Some thought leaders argue that Agile software projects are like complex adaptive systems (CAS); related agents interacting in an environment of continually changing conditions. …

Being agile at becoming Agile, child's play right? Read More »

The first peer to peer tertiary IT education academy in Africa was launched last night in downtown Johannesburg; it was a celebration of talent, partnership and possibility. The launch was held in one of the oldest, traditional banking halls of 1940’s Johannesburg, now converted to a world class venue. The colonialist architecture of 87 Commissioner Street was from the …

Wethinkcode and FNB: #feeshavefallen Read More »

Real world banking IT experience, cool tech and talent development; it’s all happening at FNB’s 2016 Grad Programme. “moveForward(100);” was President Obama’s simple machine instruction at the 2014 Hour of Code event which also made him the first US President to write a line of code. Computer science education officially became mainstream (again) and he reminded the …

FNB.Grad_Programme(tech_success) Read More »

Exponential growth sets new standards and raises expectations by customers; many industries have been disrupted by this phenomenon and banking will be no exception. Transport, accommodation, retail and the media industries have all been disrupted by relatively new companies in a short period. Uber, Airbnb, Facebook and Alibaba dominate their markets with highly innovative and tech-savvy-customer-centric business models. They also don’t …

Banking and the real e-race Read More »

Start by understanding the risks and costs of cloud, how this model would benefit your business then assess what IT assets you want to migrate. Tesco Bank now views cloud as business as usual after a full migration in less than nine months. However cloud has struggled to make significant inroads in large banks due to issues such as availability, …

Banking and the cloud; don’t let the hype… well… cloud your judgment Read More »

What are the benefits and opportunities for IoT in banking; have we moved from buzzword to business value and how would it change the banking experience? Accenture’s 2015 mobility research surveyed 2000 execs across 9 industries in 15 countries; 89% believe IoT will have a major impact on their business. The banking perspective is likely to be …

Internet of Things (IoT) and Banking; helping customers bank better by extending the fintech ecosystem Read More »

Tech leaders – you will need to take your people to the next level in 2016; master your own journey first and LQ is a powerful lens. It’s the start of the year and the CIO has to master self before they can manage (or even lead) others. No matter what the demands of legacy, disruptive or enterprise …

Leadership Quotient for CIOs Read More »

The South African born, billionaire mega-techpreneur is actually human – but you might not think so after reading Ashlee Vance’s superb biography. We often think we know someone better after we read a book about them; Elon Musk’s multi-industry disruption, highly complex persona and unbelievable tech smarts destroy this theory. He is incredibly difficult to …

Elon Musk; the Iron Man stars in Back to the Future Read More »

Africa DevOps Day was hosted by Barclays in Johannesburg recently; I spoke about experimental agility at scale using the recent FNB CodeFest as an example. DevOps seeks to drive increased levels of collaboration between developers and operations; much like the way Agile values “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. In his talk, Thomas Enoch …

Agile and DevOps, Cousins of Collaboration Read More »

The EY Strategic Growth Forum in Johannesburg grappled with how technology is disrupting banking; as a panelist in the forum I offered insights on some key questions. New entrants, new tech, new thinking – what does this mean for the industry and how well are banks responding? FNB’s Innovators Programme continues to drive a successful culture of disruptive thinking …

Technology and Banking Disruption: Level playing fields or new rules? Read More »

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 »