Get agile to work in practice - is my motto. This led me to take interest in Kanban, Lean, TDD, Specification by example, cloud and serverless technologies. I have more than 20 years experience of doing agile and helping companies small and large, primarily in Sweden. Between 2014 and 2016 I worked for the Salvation Army in Indonesia to help the health services there to become more effective. Between 2018-2023 I created a bootcamp for the School of Applied Technology where we trained the next generation of agile developers. I have presented at many international conferences in Europe and Asia and I've written two books, Kanban in Action and Salvation: The Bungsu Story.
When you have no operational permit, no customers, and the very building you are operating in falls in - most organisations give up. Not so with the Salvation Army hospital in Bandung, Indonesia - they decided to try to save the hospital and I was very fortunate to help them in their journey.
Me?! A lean/agile coach. A Westerner with little to no knowledge in hospital management and operation. We started to apply the principles of kanban and turned the hospital into something amazing. Transforming not only the organisation but also some lives among the people on the staff. While working with the hospital I gained deeper insight and knowledge about what the principles of lean and kanban means and how they can be applied to make us more and more effective.
A Seat at the Table is a wonderful book about how the role of tech leaders in general and CIO specifically have changed dramatically over the last decades.
From a cost center where spending should be kept to an absolute minimum, with a strong focus on hardware to an enabling role that drives and innovate business. Mark Schwartz guides us through these changes in his normal entertaining way.
I've rarely (never) laughed out loud from a business book but this one did that for me.
Agile, Lean, and DevOps approaches are radical game changers, providing a fundamentally different way to think about how IT fits into the enterprise, how IT leaders lead, and how IT can harness technology to accomplish the objectives of the enterprise. But honest and open conversations are not taking place between management and Agile delivery teams.
In A Seat at the Table, CIO Mark Schwartz explores the role of IT leadership as it is now and opens the door to reveal IT leadership as it should be-an integral part of the value creation engine. With an easy style, Schwartz reveals that…
This is a beautiful, honest, and heartwarming description of how Pixar and their strong company culture works.
It’s written, of course, by their founder, Ed Catmull. The book walks us through the history of the company and how the culture and values were discovered as they went.
I think this book is important for IT folks to read, as we are also in a creative business, and hence need to lead in ways that allow for creativity to flow and spread. I especially love the parts where the author reflects on what didn’t work and how they improved it. And the stories about my favorite characters and how they were brought to life.
Part autobiography, part history of Pixar, part business book, Creativity Inc is a stimulating, feel-good, insightful and highly inspirational collection of lessons in creativity and business from the president of Pixar and Disney Animation, Ed Catmull.
'Just might be the best business book ever written.' -- Forbes Magazine 'Great book. Wish I could give it more than 5 Stars' -- ***** Reader review 'Incredibly inspirational' -- ***** Reader review 'Honestly, one of the best books I've read in a long time' -- ***** Reader review 'Read it and read it again, then read it again and then again' -- *****…
After I read this book I almost felt like I was cheating.
Because now I knew. I understood how to talk, and inform and educate in a way that made any change I’m proposing much more likely to stay.
I have blogged several times about this book and I cannot recommend it enough. Ted and Dan Heath have written easy to read, science-grounded, fun, and story-packed book that anyone doing any change would be happy to have in their hands.
___________________________________ Change is hard. It doesn't have to be.
We all know that change is hard. It's unsettling, it's time-consuming, and all too often we give up at the first sign of a setback.
But why do we insist on seeing the obstacles rather than the goal? This is the question that bestselling authors Chip and Dan Heath tackle in their compelling and insightful book. They argue that we need only understand how our minds function in order to unlock shortcuts to switches in behaviour.
Illustrating their ideas with scientific studies and remarkable real-life turnarounds - from the secrets of…
This is a little gem that not that many people have read. If you have Air Force, Army, and Navy - why would you need anything more? Well, US Marines have chaos and unpredictability as their normality.
This book describes how they work with values and culture to build small autonomous teams that can still cooperate with a larger unit to achieve amazing things where others fail. I’ve found the book highly inspiring, and although I read it for the first time over 12 years ago, I still come back to it frequently.
That's what every business wants to be. And that's why the U.S. Marines excel in every mission American throws at them, no matter how tough the odds. In Corps Business, journalist David H. Freeman identifies the Marine's simple but devastatingly effective principles for managing people and resources -- and ultimately winning. Freedman discusses such techniques as "the rule of three," "managing by end state," and the "70% solution," to show how they can be applied to business solutions.
Turn the Ship Around is the amazing and lovely story about how Captain David L. Marquet completely turned the way a nuclear submarine worked upside down.
From giving orders to giving intent and in doing so creating new leaders rather than mindless executors.
The book is packed with nuggets (nudges?) of management gold like “Move the authority to where the information is,” for example. I keep coming back to this inspiring story over and over again. Sadly I lost my copy, but it lives in my mind forever.
"Leadership should mean giving control rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than forging followers."
David Marquet, an experienced Navy officer, was used to giving orders. As newly appointed captain of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, he was responsible for more than a hundred sailors, deep in the sea. In this high-stress environment, where there is no margin for error, it was crucial his men did their job and did it well. But the ship was dogged by poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention in the fleet.
Wendy Lee Hermance was heard on National Public Radio (NPR) stations with her Missouri Folklore series in the 1980s. She earned a journalism degree from Stephens College, served as Editor and Features Writer for Midwestern and Southern university and regional publications, then settled into writing real estate contracts. In 2012 she attended University of Sydney, earning a master’s degree by research thesis. Her books include Where I’m Going with this Poem, a memoir in poetry and prose. Weird Foods of Portugal: Adventures of an Expatmarks her return to feature writing as collections of narrative non-fiction stories.
Weird Foods of Portugal describes the author's first years trying to make sense of a strange new place and a home there for herself.
Witty, dreamlike, and at times jarring, the book sizzles with social commentary looking back at America and beautiful, finely drawn descriptions of Portugal and its people. Part dark-humor cautionary tale, part travel adventure, ultimately, Hermance's book of narrative non-fiction serves as affirmation for any who wish to make a similar move themselves.
"Wendy Lee Hermance describes Portugal´s colorful people and places - including taxi drivers and animals - with a poet´s empathy and dark humor. Part travel adventure, part cautionary tale, Weird Foods of Portugal is at it´s heart, affirmation for all who consider making such a move themselves."
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