Panchal’s Directive

Panchal’s Directive

The proliferation of job titles in an organization encourages the diffusion of responsibility and dilution of vision. Panchal's Directive provides a guide to the number of different titles in an organization: take the square root of the number of people in the...

Hierarchical Amplification

Hierarchical Amplification

Consider one of your peers or subordinates or juniors some one at the same level as yours or below. Lets name him Jerry. Next time Jerry or some one like him/her requests for a non-trivial action from you, reflect on how your thinking, processes this ask. It is my...

Product Owner takes Vacation?

Product Owner takes Vacation?

The role of a Product Owner with in Scrum teams or that of a Customer in XP teams is critical to the success of the product. What to do? - when they take vaction. What are your options? Say your product owner is going on a planned vacation for a couple of weeks,...

Recognizing Bottleneck’s

Recognizing Bottleneck’s

The term "bottleneck" refers to a point where after the flow or velocity perceptively reduces. It is metaphorically derived from flow of water through a narrow mouthed bottle where the flow of water is constrained by its neck. For drinking purposes it is a good thing...

Sharing Values, a team building exercise

Sharing Values, a team building exercise

A few months ago, I was facilitating sprint retrospective for a multi-cultural team that had members of different national origins (UK, South Africa, Angola and United States). We started gathering information regarding their first sprint. I realized that this team...