Category: Agile

  • The art of Transferring Knowledge

    One of the most common questions that comes up in Bid opportunities is usually some variant of “how do you transfer your knowledge to us before you leave?” This is completely valid question, and really important to both ask, and to understand, but also hard to answer well in 100 words without risking looking like…

  • Doing your best vs. achieving the goal

    The Agile Prime Directive states “Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” This is a wonderful principle to have during Retrospectives, in order to avoid…

  • From Colocation to Remote First

    Changing how we work, to ensure we can still deliver. One of the big tenants of agile working has always been about the importance of colocation, and there are a million blogs out there on why colocation makes a big difference. The first value of the Agile Manifesto states: Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and…

  • Why SME’s are important, but shouldn’t be the Product Manager

    Along time ago in a land far away; well four years ago and sat in a very cold office in trafalgar square; Ross Ferguson , Alex Kean , Scot Colfer and I plus a few others sat discussing the DDaT capability framework for Product Management. The discussions we had at the time focused on “how…

  • How to change a culture

    When delivering digital or business transformation, one of the things that often gets overlooked is the cultural changes that are needed to embed the transformation succesfully. There can be many reasons why this happens, either because it’s not been considered, because it’s not been considered a priority, or simply because the people leading the transformation…

  • Delivering in a crisis

    One of the key personal aims I had when I joined Difrent, just over six months ago, was to work somewhere that would let me deliver stuff that matters. Because I am passionate about people, and about Delivery; After 15 years, right in the thick of some pioneering public sector work, combining high profile product…

  • How do we determine value?

    And how do we make sure we are delivering it? In a previous blog I discussed the importance of understanding the value you are trying to add, and how you measure cost vs vale. How we measure value and ensure we are delivering a valuable return on investment is one of the ‘big’ questions at…

  • What ever happened to “there are no stupid questions?”

    This week I had a great conversation with @ClareSudbery of MadeTech and @RachelleHunt of StrangeDigital about the importance of using plain english and creating an inclusive environment where people feel able to speak up and ask questions. Back when I started working in Digital as a Product Owner in 2011, and I did my agile…

  • What even is agile anyway?

    So you’re a leader in your organisation and Agile is ‘the thing’ that everyone is talking about. Your organisation has possible trialed one or two Agile projects within the Digital or Tech department, but they haven’t really delivered like you thought they would, and you think you can ‘do more’ with it, but honestly, what…

  • #OneGreenGov

    One of the key reasons I joined @Difrent was their commitment to #TechForGood. In my experience #TechForGood is one of those phrases that gets batted around, as such I was very keen when I started to understand what that phrase meant to Difrent and if it really meant anything at all! Much to my delight,…