10 things from an angry Digital guy

Historically we write some stuff we think is somewhat serious and smart about the world of Digital strategy and delivery, but today we have some wit and wisdom in the form of a few lists we have made over recent years. Enjoy and share if you feel our pain!

10 things that may not be wise:

1. Telling smart people what to deliver
2. Setting deadlines for delivery before you know the product is feasible, desirable, valuable and delightful
3. The concept that a deadline in six months is more relevant than testing ideas with real users next week
4. Thinking Software products are delivered like Civil Engineering products
5. Decreasing praise and increasing critique the moment reality bites
6. Must launch before “insert time based event” or we all fail
7. Pretending you know the ROI of something before you even know if people want it or will pay for it
8. Focus on process, framework or method over talent
9. Not doing regular retrospectives
10. Middle Management who add no value

10 things that may be wise:

1. Small multi-disciplinary teams with autonomy, mastery and purpose
2. Absolute focus on delivering the most valuable thing next
3. Not confusing Value with Feature
4. The delivery engine to release and test working product with real people, at will
5. Eliminating handovers and repeated, time consuming manual tasks
6. Line of sight from your vision to the thing you are delivering – Knowing “Why?”
7. Criteria for what “done” means
8. Asking every day and every delivery cycle, “what can we do better together?”
9. Know your people and assign them to their strengths
10. If someone does a good job, let them know you noticed

10 things people rarely say that tell you we are all one team.. Right? 

1. I’m in Technology, we do the bidding of “the business”
2. I’m a Product Manager, more features aren’t the same as more value
3. I’m a Marketing specialist. I can be Agile on the above the line plan and launch PR
4. I’m a Lawyer, let’s not get bogged down on Data Privacy
5. I’m in a department still called Ops, this ITIL thing is way past it
6. Marketing again, of course I want to come to the showcase every week I mean marketing something I don’t understand would be nutso
7. Head of Commercial, before I signed this huge deal to get my bonus I thought I’d ask someone if we could actually deliver any of this ****
8. I’ve got a degree in applied maths and a PHD in machine learning, can you please exclude me from the decision on what I should code
9. Project Manager – Gantt chart! it’s a software product not a frikken loft conversion
10. Sponsor – I’m here to help the team not bang the table and say “where is it”.

Fear not, it’s still like this in most places. But maybe there’s a better way. – The Exponential team.

Guest post by Justin Tomlinson

KS