VersionOne was kind enough to invite me as a presenter to a small conference event in Austin on December 7th 2009. The Austine keynote went well and I was lucky enough to be ranked as the best presenter at the event. There were 90+ people in attendance and 78 people filled in an evaluation.

Catch me in Austin, TX delivering a Keynote for the Agile Journal December 7th,  http://www.accurev.com/seminar/austin20091208-4

Recommended

If you are in the San Francisco Area then check out this conference. This conference is being organized by experts in the field of product development. They will be using the power of serious game play to identify what will make for a great product that people will love.  Those familar with complex product development already know that “building the right thing” is the greatest risk to development. This  conference offers unique skills to help you reduce that risk.

1 day – June 26th,  2009

Innovation, Design & Serious Games Exchange

Organized by Enthiosys and Other Great Companies

I will not be there because of prior commitments but, would highly recomed for ScrumMasters and Product Owners who face the tough challenge of building world class products that people love.

Register

Cost: $50-$90 (depending on options money well spent)

So, Are Organizations Really Benefiting Social Networking

 Often the answer is “NO“.

Web Of Technical and Social Patterns

Why?

We commonly find organizations adopting technologies and building processes with needless structures at a rate that is chewing away at the benefit social networking technology brings.  For example, we continue to see rampant signs of multitasking, despite a large amount of evidence that shows people do not multi task well, especially on demanding deep thought. Of course we can always walk and chew gum but, how many people can read a novel, play a game a of chess and carry a conversation all the same time? multitasking is an opiate of the lazy minded who want a quick fix for productivity.  Too often, we become forced into bad behaviors and frenetically driven pattens that force us to make the wrong decisions. These bad decisions chew away any gains we make.

We are dealing with the need to nurture and grow complex systems. This transcends traditional ways of thinking and requires a respectful shift and appreciation for how to work with complexity. Devloping a complex system requires a the development of an smart adaptive approach to planning and dealing with new information.

Smarter Social Organizations Are Possible Now

Enabling these smarter organizations is a matter of freeing up the intellectual capacity you already have. The tools and technology available now can bring about a vastly smarter organizations to emerge than we have previously seen. With a smarter organization, patterns of practices will emerge that defy one mind’s limited capacity to understand and digest.  However, a team who’s focus is to help the organization become better can see these things and tune the environment.  Collaboration tools and outcomes need to be applied and adapted by the people using them. A collaborative tools and outcomes enabler team needs to support and nurture a base level of knowledge for that to occur. 

Work From A Know Center

A team who’s job it is to nurture smarter social organizations needs to focus on a simple rules based applied practice. Simple rules are clearly being shown to be the key lever to emerging complex adaptive patterns of behavior. The team will need to continuously adjust and tune the organizations social structure and it’s interaction.

Transforming organization to work smarter needs to be adopted and done in an empirical way. A team that is dedicated to stimulating the environment so that adaptive patterns of practice emerge is necessary. The team that stimulates the environment should be comprised of people who have skin in the game and should be driven by an evidence based decision making process.  These experts should have a passion for becoming adept to leveraging social media as a source of vibrant rapid feedback. Expertise should be developed locally and nurtured through applied collaborative practice. 

Great leadership of tomorrow will  be recognized by it’s ability to bring people together through the use of technology and do not suppress their identity.

Great leaders must allow for individual recognition inside/outside the corporate walls and reward  success through collaborative effort. For individuals this means pursuing professional development through collaborative exchange. This is the promise of social media and the benefit it can bring to organizations both large and small. 

• Project Management is mainly about “managing the work” or stimulating the environment so the work gets done with minimal telling people how / what to do.
• Source Control if it’s only one file then, I don’t need it of course it is always more than that as soon as it goes over 100 files it becomes a necessity.
• Build automation (and repeatable automated configurations as a whole) shows up after source control and becomes a necessity around 500(pick a number that you think you will go crazy at) items or so. It is a number thing but, I can get by longer without repeatable automated configurations than I can without Source Control.
• Test Automation this shows up as needed after 1000 plus code files. Test automation is all about feedback. When I say feedback it assumes people are already thinking in terms of interface design “start with the end in mind” if not then TDD/Unit must be purused because people are missing critical thinking skills.