A Simple Way to Get a Grip on Your Goals

You’ve probably heard the saying, What gets measured gets managed. But just setting big goals—like OKRs—isn’t enough on its own. If you’re not careful, those goals can pile up, get stuck, or drift out of sight. Before long, you’re wading through what I call the OKR swamp—lots of plans, not much progress. A straightforward way …

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The Story Points Detox Plan Shortcut

Reader Mary shared an inspiring story of introducing modern flow metrics in parallel to classic agile metrics, such as Velocity, to improve flow on her team. If you haven’t guessed so far, introducing Flow is one of my favorite patterns for moving from mindless mechanical agile (Agile Theater) towards intent-driven principle-aware agility. There’s something about …

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Stop focusing on Utilization. Start Focusing on Flow (with a background of smooth flow in a river)

Stop Focusing on Utilization. Start Focusing on Flow

Does it make sense to aim for 100% utilization across the organization? Is that efficient? Whether it’s an ad agency, a factory, a product development organization, or any organization – it has a constraint. The constraint/bottleneck should be optimized, but other areas of the process shouldn’t aim for 100% utilization since that would create waste …

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