Sriram Narayan's Blog, page 2

Metrics, Targets and Incentives

Chapter 12 of Agile IT Org Design is on metrics. It argues that we have to be very careful of elevating measurements to targets and elevating targets to incentives. In this post, I'll continue to add relevant articles around the internet as and when I find them.

Powerful People React More Unethically to Incentives (HBR, March 2016)

Martin Fowler's infodeck on sales commissions at ThoughtworksThis content is obtained from a feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/agileorgd... Get the book: w...

Does Product-Centric IT Need Projects and Programs?

Product-centric IT differs from conventional, project-centric IT in significant ways.

Product-Centric Project-Centric Stable long-lived teams Temporary teams Teams aligned to long-term business capabilities Teams aligned to scope of project Cross-functional teams are the norm Functional specialty teams are common Focus is value (actual benefits realization) Focus is plan compliance
But projects and programs are a staple of enterprise IT. Doesn't Product-Centric IT need projects and prog...

Scrum is not enough

I wrote a post at ThoughtWorks Insights in which I use this picture to illustrate why Scrum alone is not enough to make Agile deliver business impact. I then go deeper into one particular thing that's needed (among others) over and above Scrum—reorganizing teams to be outcome-oriented. Read it here.Get the book: www.agileorgdesign.com Sriram Narayan.

Designing teams for outcome-orientation

Here's a podcast that explores IT reorganization from a structural angle. We discuss how to design teams for outcome (rather than activity) orientation, how to execute streams of work that cut across different product-centric teams and the role of project and program managers in product-centric IT.

Get the book: www.agileorgdesign.com Sriram Narayan.

A tool for business-IT alignment

Information radiators such as story card walls, burn-up charts, build pipelines etc. help with team level agility. What are the corresponding information radiators for overall organizational agility? For example, some places use portfolio Kanban walls. In my book, I describe several organizational information radiators. One of them is what I call as an Alignment Map. They help visualize the alignment of ongoing work with business outcomes. Martin Fowler has kindly published my description of...

Three principles of Agile IT Org Design

I wrote an article for InformIT where I describe three principles of Agile IT Org Design that the book recommends and elaborates:Govern for value over predictabilityOrganize for responsiveness over cost-efficiencyDesign for intrinsic motivation and unscripted collaborationThis content is obtained from a feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/agileorgd... Get the book: www.agileorgdesign.com Sriram Narayan

Essentials of scale-out management

I have previously stated that Agile scales by scaling-out rather than scaling-up. I expand on this in a presentation at an event in London. (slides)


This content is obtained from a feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/agileorgd... Get the book: www.agileorgdesign.com Sriram Narayan

Interview on InfoQ

http://www.infoq.com/articles/organization-design

"Sriram Narayan’s book provides a basis for reviewing and reshaping the IT organization to equip it better for the digital age."Get the book: www.agileorgdesign.com Sriram Narayan.

Org Chart Debt - A Risky, Off-Balance Sheet Liability

Recently, Steve Blank, a luminary who developed the Customer Development methodology, a precursor to the Lean Startup movement, said that organizational debt is like technical debt in software but worse: “Organizational debt is all the people/culture compromises made to 'just get it done' in the early stages of a start-up.”
“Just when things should be going great, organizational debt can turn a growing company into a chaotic nightmare. Growing companies need to understand how to recognize and...

Agile Organization Structure

Some people mistake my book, "Agile IT Org Design" to be only about org structure. A couple of them even wondered if the book was a 250 page elaboration of Conway’s law. As if Conway’s law sums up everything there is to IT org structure.
Although I address it quite comprehensively, structure is but one aspect of organization design. Eight out of sixteen chapters in the book have almost nothing to do with structure. Only two (Ch 4. Superstructure and Ch 5. Team Design) are 100% about structure....