In a waterfall project, it is easier to cut refactoring, for example, because the impact is felt in the future, when engineers feel the pain of technical debt and customers feel the pain of lengthy delivery schedules. Cycle time measures are irrelevant when release cycles are too long. However, as agile teams reduce delivery cycles to months, weeks

As George Westerman, principal research scientist with the MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy, says, “When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”

Having an LVT aligned around outcomes and an organization aligned around functions is a misalignment of people to desired outcomes.

You can’t plan away uncertainty; you need to experiment it away.

Projects typically consist of a collection of features implemented within a timeframe. A project team is temporarily assembled to complete the set of features within that time frame. When the defined work is complete, the team is disbanded. This process creates several constraints on maximizing value for the customer. First, the temporary nature of

One thing we have learned from clients is that often processes, practices, or software systems that have been competitive differentiators become competitive anchors. A large financial company based its success on a core software application that agents used when working with clients and prospects. The application was so complex that the company cou

“Shortcomings in organizational culture are one of the main barriers to company success in the digital age. That is a central finding from McKinsey’s recent survey of global executives, which highlighted three digital-culture deficiencies: functional and departmental silos, a fear of taking risks, and difficulty forming and acting on a single view

The three principles on the outside loop—outcome-based strategy, value-based prioritization, and lightweight planning and governance— focus on answering the “how should we invest” question. The inner loop principles—autonomous teams; adaptive, learning culture; and self-sufficient, collaborative decisions—speak to working together and adapting fast

An initiative describes what to build to prove out a bet. Initiatives typically take the form of a series of smaller hypotheses (or experiments) that have a clear measure of success,