Leadership Insights Blog by Peter Alkema

Unlock your next level’s leadership potential and they will never look back. Most IT professionals reach a point in their career where they need to transition from relying on their core technical skills to managing people. Being asked to run a team simply moves them from writing their own code to managing other people who …

Leading leaders; a light hand on the tiller Read More »

You can apply most Agile principles selectively on projects. Forest Gump made the line famous and it is a useful way of referring to the toolbox approach that many people take with Agile. If you would like to improve daily collaboration then hold stand-ups and scrums, if you want better quality code try pair programming; …

Agile is like a box of chocolates Read More »

Find a way to anchor user requirements to practical building blocks. It is important to understand what a user wants and why, through the gathering of user stories. However, requirements can quickly become unrealistic wishlists unless they are kept in check by architects who understand how the building blocks fit together. If you are leading …

Why Agile architects are crucial Read More »

Don’t confuse product quality with execution excellence. Unless you are talking about Gordon Ramsay, most chefs perform a very different job from the person who actually runs the restaurant. There are good reasons for this and yet in business and even with personal projects we often let the pursuit of quality trump actual progress. Quality …

The chef never runs the restaurant Read More »

Agile is about forward thinking not last minute risk management. “We’ll have to push this release out because the monthly changes on the mainframe only go live the following week.” This is common where systems integrate to back-end transactional platforms that follow a stricter timetable for implementing changes. The temptation is to delay but either …

How to embrace Agile despite complexity Read More »

A sprint is a perfect name – it is simple, self-evident and the route is clear. Well written software is intuitive and doesn’t require manuals and long training courses – no one has been trained to use Facebook or a Playstation. Likewise, good software engineering methodologies are easily explained, quickly understood and avoid jargon and …

Use Agile sprints to get out of the forest Read More »

“Working software over comprehensive documentation… …That is, while there is value in the item on the right, we value the item on the left more.” (Agile Manifesto) These are not the words that an IT project auditor wants to hear; surely we need big documents describing every last detail of the software we are building? …

What does Agile say about documentation? Read More »

We’re adopting Agile and I’m learning some valuable leadership lessons. Most IT leaders are somewhat cynical about new fads, whether they are gadgets, methods, operating systems or new coffee machines. Maybe it’s an intellectual version of Moore’s law at work or just “there is nothing new under the sun.” Having spent over a decade using …

How to start your Agile adoption journey Read More »

The Power of 10 Minutes is underestimated by most business people. Create hours of quality time from well used bursts of 10 minutes. Everyone is busy these days so I won’t tell you about having 5 children under 6, writing a book and running a transformational IT programme at a bank all at the same …

The Power of 10 Minutes Read More »