Citation du Dimanche – Fujio Cho
May 20, 2012
“We get brilliant results from average people managing brilliant systems. Our competitors get average results from brilliant people working around broken systems.”
“Nous obtenons d’excellents résultats de personnes normales gérant des systèmes géniaux. Nos concurrents obtiennent des résultats moyens de personnes excellentes utilisant des systèmes défectueux.”
Fujio Cho, Président du directoire de Toyota
Une citation tirée du livre blanc “Lean Product Management” [EN], et un principe qui est pronfondément inscrit dans la culture de développement logiciel Agile, culture où, la aussi, le culte du héros ou de l’expert qui va sauver le monde est mis à mal.
L’objectif dans les deux cas (Lean et Agile) est d’avoir un système dans lequel des personnes normales sont capables de réaliser des produits admirables de façon soutenable (c’est à dire sans se tuer au travail). Sans que cela nécessite 250 de QI mis à contribution 60h par semaine.
Encore une fois, ce peut-être vu comme une utopie de consultants noyés par la théorie. Toyota a montré que c’était tout à fait applicable dans une entreprise privée, dans un secteur extrêmement concurrentiel dans lequel les contraintes de coût, qualité, délais et de gestion des risques sont particulièrement importants.
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
May 9, 2012
When the likes of Tim O’Reilly, Geoffrey Moore, Don Reniersten, Steve Bell, Dan Heath, Marc Andreesen and Mary Poppendieck all sing the praise of a book, it might be a good idea to check it out. Which #hypertextual did, bringing a review in the process.
Eric Ries has written this book out of his intense experience with startups, with a strong focus on his experience as the CTO of imvu, an online application with 3D avatars. Many people have struggled to make a start-up succeed. Few have come with such valuable and great insights.
In a very Lean approach, Eric has built on all the events and failures that has happened during this experience to learn, learn and learn again.
Out of this validated learning, he built a simple and actionable system for continuous innovation which he shares with us in this best-seller … Read the rest of this entry »
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
May 7, 2012
It is not a simple task to bring some value while reviewing a classic book about which many thought leaders have already extensively elaborated upon. So I won’t even try and I shall just attempt to make a synthesis for further #hypertextual references.
Clayton Christensen is an Harvard Professor and he published this acclaimed book in 1997. 15 years later, this book remains as relevant as ever.
I won’t sound very creative while claiming that this is an awesome book. No wonder why it was one of Steve Jobs favorite essay. #hypertextual Main takeaways one click away … Read the rest of this entry »
(Picture by Peter Farago & Inkela Klemetz-Farago)
This is something I’ve been thinking of for quite a while now.
Actually, since 2011 edition of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. And this telling quote by Jamie Pappas : Social Business is more about soft skills than about tech skills. I’ve ben having this impression that organisations governance have been moving from reason-based rigid masculine values such as competition, hierarchy, plans, autocracy and results to more empathic and flexible feminine ones such as collaboration, networks, emergence, democracy and purpose.
Digging into the subject I have found some material that tend to corroborate this idea. In my humble opinion, this probably is the most important point to understand the 21st century organisation (warning, back into long post mood)
Social Business Forum 2012
April 29, 2012
(picture by Luis Suarez)
I will be at the Social Business Forum 2012 in Milano on 4th and 5th of June.
I can’t wait as Emanuele Quintarelli did a fantastic job in gathering so many talented speakers : Oscar Berg, Sameer Patel (freshly appointed Global VP collaboration software at SAP), Thierry de Baillon, Rawn Shah, Bertrand Duperrin, Luis Suarez, Mark Tamis, John Stepper and John Hagel .
Talented speakers which I don’t count myself in – I will just do an informal talk during the Open Conference.
Lean as the solution to scale agile methodologies
April 25, 2012
Agile Methodologies have already proven how efficient they are when applied on small teams to deliver software with great quality, predictability while nurturing team spirit and fostering people engagement. There are tons of literature on that very subject out there and, in 2010, Gartner predicted that by 2012 80% of software development project will be carried out using Agile methodologies.
As these methodologies have proven their value and became industry standards for small projects (PMI added the PMI Agile Certified Practictioner as a new certification which says a lot about how well this methodological toolbox has been integrated into corporatica), the detractor voices became less and less audible but for one point : scalability. The official anti-agile persona (usually not comfortable with the change of culture related to the implementation of Agile methodologies) know they have a point here : how to scale agile on large projects with many teams ?
Henrik Kniberg’s book Lean From the Trenches : Managing Large Scale projects with Kanban is the definite answer to this last question…
Citation du Dimanche : Jeremy Rifkin
March 18, 2012
“In the coming half century, the conventional, centralized business operations of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions will increasingly be subsumed by the distributed business practices of the Third Industrial Revolution; and the traditional, hierarchical organization of economic and political power will give way to lateral power organized nodally across society.” (Jeremy Rifkin)
Extrait du livre The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, extrait publié sur The Huffington Post.
Ne manquez pas ce dialogue passionnant avec Luc Ferry dans l’émission Du Grain à Moudre sur France Culture : le choc des 2 visions du monde. Rifkin a vu finir le monde ancien tandis que Ferry s’y accroche désespérément.
The Enterprise 2.0 Summit 2012 will be held in Paris in the exclusive premises of The Centre National des Armées on February 7th and 8th.
The focus this year in on Understanding and Designing the Social Business Excellence. Great Keynotes and sessions ahead with very respected figures such as Rawn Shah, Dion Hinchcliffe, Richard Collin or Yves Caseau to address this very issue.
Now the questions you may ask yourself : why would I attend ? What’s in it for me ? Click to find out … Read the rest of this entry »
Strong Processes, Weak Culture
January 9, 2012
(Photo Michail Raškovskij)
Another great blog post by Bertrand Duperrin where he identifies strong processes as prerequisites of successful implementation of Enterprise Social Networks.
And once again, I only am half-convinced. The main risk I see here is to sanctify institutional objects (processes) rather than encourage a culture of continuous improvement in the organization. Read the rest of this entry »
The Idea Trafficker : An Interview with Scott Berkun
December 2, 2011
Scott Berkun has been one of the main inspirations of #hypertextual ever since this blog has started about 4 years ago.
Each of his books have been reviewed here : The Art of Project Management, The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of a public Speaker (FR). They have all shed a bright and new light on the corporate world with a focus on management, innovation and creativity. These could be seen as survival guidelines in Corporatica.
Scott has just self-published his fourth book : Mindfire, Big ideas for Curious Minds the definitive best-of collection of his famous blog. I am delighted the Idea Trafficker (as Scott defines himself in Confessions of a Public Speaker) has accepted to discuss it on #hypertextual :
I have been blogging quite substantially about Lean Management lately and I have noticed a common purpose with Agile methodologies (which get me blogging 4 years ago) and Enterprise 2.0 (which has kept #hypertextual busy for the last 2 years) : they all address complexity and permanent change, the key characteristics of our business world. This is one of the key ideas of the great book by Yves Caseau Processus & Entrerprise 2.0 [FR].
They also all fight the same plague : the standard hierarchical organization inherited from Frederick Winslow Taylor, and its specific characteristics : division of labor, strong hierarchy, economy of scale, centralized decisions, command and control management, top down processes etc …
They don’t fight it because it’s uncool (even though it deadly is) but because it does not work in the 21st century. We now have many evidences that this type of organisations is not appropriate in an economy where complexity and perpetual change are the rules (for french readers, refer to this awesome interview by french paleo-anthropologist Pascal Picq).
Peter Drucker has taught us that in the knowledge economy the main sources of wealth are knowledge and innovation. Gary Hamel and John Hagel both stressed how fostering employees passion is critical for organisations to thrive.
While Lean, Agile and Enterprise 2.0 lie on the Republican Side (Douglas McGregor‘s Theory Y), Taylorism lies on the Dark Side (Theory X). Let’s make it clear : such vertical and hierarchical organisations as the latter don’t scale in this horizontal and networked world.
Yet, it still prevails. The questions are how come and what can we do about it … (warning long truck ahead)
PMP Certified !
November 4, 2011
Ladies & Gentlemen, please be warned that I just passed the PMP Certification.
I have been studying the topic during about 6 months and I am quite pleased with the result.
Now, why on earth would an Enterprise 2.0 evangelist and Agile Methodologies practitioner would want to become PMP certified and how did he do it ?
Read on if you have some spare clicks …
European Lean IT Summit 2011 – Wrap-Up
October 28, 2011
The First European Lean IT Summit was held on 13th and 14th October in the glorious premises of Centre National des Armées in Paris.
A great opportunity to see and meet Lean IT worldwide experts in Paris. Many speakers, great keynotes, good arguments, bold positions and many workshops to foster lean thinking in an IT environment. And a superb organisation by Operae Partners.
International superstars such as Tom & Mary Poppendieck, Steve Bell, Daniel Jones, Michael Ballé, Jean Cunningham and our local experts Pierre Pezziardi, Yves Caseau or Regis Medina all did pretty well in explaining the main challenges of Lean approach in the IT industry.
I’m still not sure how many principles there are in Lean (5, 7 or 14 as in The Toyota Way) so #hypertextual decided to align with the 7 principles approach as described in Implementing Lean Software Management by the Poppendieck‘s : a 7 points wrap-up just one click away … Read the rest of this entry »
Enterprise 2.0 – The French Touch
October 25, 2011
(Click to display e-book)
At long last we are delighted to present the english version of the french Enterprise 2.0 white paper.
This collaborative e-book is available online and has been coordinated by Anthony Poncier. His idea was to gather people with different backgrounds and responsibilities in the knowledge economy to offer different perspectives on the social business topic. I’m glad I was lucky enough to contribute to this remarkable initiative.
Big-Up to Frédéric Dormon who took care of graphic design and, obviously, to Anthony for being relentless, for sharing his vision and for his leadership on this project. His introduction to the book and the cast below …
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