Meaning Of The Expression:

The expression bang for the buck is actually an idiom that simply means the value for one’s money. It connotes the worth of an individual’s money in relation to a service rendered to him/her or any item purchased. It refers to the value in return on the money you spent on something.

Bang for the buck includes the maximum cooperation and partnership between the product manager and development team for the prioritization of backlog items. Instead of just carrying out your conceived plans and agenda ignorantly and in a clueless manner, this game helps you in so many ways. One of the important things it does is to enable you effectively analyze the costs and benefits of each laid down task. Another advantage is that this game helps to organize your tasks in a proper way and manner that indicates where you can begin and in what order to go in also. In order to start prioritizing your to-do list and start checking items off, plot a graph of each of the items against their cost and value.

RULES OF THE GAME
In this game, a graph should be plotted with the y-axis containing the value of the items. While the x-axis should contain the cost of the items with each of the axis been arranged as a Fibonacci number. The backlog items can be written on sticky notes and placed on the chart along with any other important task. Each item should be carefully and appropriately placed on the graph after much deliberation from the team members.

While the product manager should be concerned with the y-axis which focuses on the value position of the task, the development team should take note of the x-axis which contains the cost. Having several players, gives you an opportunity to get different views on each item. By the time all the items have been posted on the chart, you can now get started on your plans using the chart as guide. For optimum value delivery over time, work across the chart in a clockwise direction. If there is a need to accomplish a particular item immediately but it’s too expensive to start off, the best option is to work together to look for a means to move it to the left on the graph.

HOW TO PRIORITIZE
One of the major importance of bang for the bucks is that it helps to prioritize items. Both short and long term tasks can be easily prioritized with this game. By comparing the value and cost of each item, you can be able to rank each of the items in order of priority. At the end of the day, with cooperation from your team, it is possible to change or tweak approaches for the tasks based on the most important.

This means that any task that has been prioritized will be given the most consideration. Therefore any operation or activity will be carried out to suit that particular task. If you are able to know how to prioritize properly, it will help to decide where to begin working. Apart from the fact that this increases efficiency and productivity, it also allows you to see the impact and benefits faster. In order to properly prioritize, work on the graph or chart in a clockwise direction because you’re prioritizing by bang for the buck.

Agile Product Managers make it a point of duty to prioritize backlog items in order to drive profitable growth. This natural ability of theirs is greatly increased as a result of making the link between the product backlog and their ability to drive profit clear and plain.

— Slimane Zouggari

Radical management is the idea of Steve Denning, the author of many books on leadership and management. Radial management is one of the creation that used in the industry to give agile and favourable response aftermath.

What is Radical Management?

Radical management is a process of managing the firm or organization and a the same time increasing the value of production and other positive factors such as sales that give delight and satisfaction for both the customer and the company. It is one way to achieve the success with many completions in the market.

How Radical Management works

Steve Denning do a good thing in applying the fundamental approach to management that helps any business and firm for better administration. Here is the core principle that he applies in his radical management:

• Continues innovation from shifting goals to meet the need of providing revenue for the stakeholders to giving delight to the customers in services that the company made.
• Changing the focus on management by one or few personnel to a sole organized team that will do the individual task and not waits to instruct by the manager.
• Shift to dynamic linking from the bureaucracy in coordination is prove to do in success result for the company and firm.
• A shift from the preoccupation with a proven efficiency that will contribute to the continued innovation of the company and firm.
• Shifting to horizontal communication from the top down commanding style.

Radical management approach is not a new thing to have an agile success in the industry, while it is not new for others, the combination of all the principle will help for agile development.

Practical examples of Radical Management

Say for instance, the company apply radical management to their company. One of the companies that use radical management is the Procter&Gamble. They use the social media and focus on the interest of the customer in a single period. Another, when Ford launches the new car product, they do not use the traditional way. They use stories and other things that focus on the need and interest of the people that is why they got agile development with the sales.

Common pitfalls of Radical Management

No matter how great is the implementation of radical management, there will always a thing that we called on as risk in radical management. One of this aspect is too much self—confidence of the leader or the implementer in the company or firm.  Leader that have too much confidence leave other things unattended. They are the one more likely to bring daring acquisition and shift strategies from time to time.

Criticisms about Radical Management

To meet success and agile result aftermath, there is a need for a leader that will serve as a servant. Some say that radical management is the same with the principle of serval leader; they just wish that the effect were not the same. A servant leader is hard to find these days.

Radical management does shift in serving the investor to serving the customers. The approach does generate an agile increase in the sales result; it does not focus on the tradition that is why it attracts success.

— Slimane Zouggari

A holacracy is the kind of governance structure characterized by the distribution of a power among self-organization groups, instead of the top-down authority in the standard hierarchical corporation culture model. This offers a flat management structure, which distributes authority. The main goal of a holacracy is to guarantee that those accountable for completing work are provided the authority to decide how that work must be carried out. In accordance to the proponents, holocracies result to greater innovation, employee engagement, accountability, transparency, agility, and efficiency.

However, some critics argued that the model does not enable for enough lateral communication. To be efficient, the role, expectations, and responsibilities for group members in a holacracy are defined, but flexible. Link roles, lie in several groups and guarantee that such groups are working in congruence along with the overall objectives and mission of the organization.

How does it work?

In holacracy, rather than hiring an individual to have a defined role, people choose to fill one or more roles at any given period and have the flexibility to move between roles and teams if they have insights and skills, which would prove advantageous to the organization.

Within the holacracy, people perform in single or more roles on behalf of the organization. Further, roles are part of the self-organizing circles in the bigger circle of the overall organization. Every person in a role is the leader for that area of authority, at the same time the follower of these roles is responsible for their areas in the organization.

The term Holacracy is a certified trademark of HolacracyOne that prohibits unauthorized entities from utilizing the word for services and products. Nevertheless, there are no restrictions on the model itself. The model is identified in the Holacracy Constitution that is made accessible under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 license.

The author of book “The Ghost in the Machine” Arthur Koestler coined the term holarchy as the organization links between holons – Greek term for whole – that describes units, which perform independently; however, wouldn’t exist without the organization they’re part.

For instance, when a farm was to accept a holacratic structure, it might look something like one team might be accountable for the land management. In that team, there might be individual roles for land management, irrigation, soil composition and more. Another team might be allocated to vehicles and tools, along with individual roles for choosing and buying new equipment, operation machinery, conducting regular maintenance checks and a lot more. Workers might play several roles.

On the other hand, Brian Robertson created the concept and dynamics of holacracy while working a software development company called Ternary Software in the beginning of 2000s. in 2007, he and his friend Tom Thomison established HolacracyOne and released Holacracy Constitution three years later. Companies, which have publicly adopted holacracy in some form are Medium and Zappos.com.

Critics have also pointed out that this holacracy as a corporate management doctrine doesn’t denote the end of the corporate hierarchy. It is still a crucial part of holacracy; in fact, the rigidity and hierarchies it makes in the different roles of the actors might be more noticeable in holacracy.

— Slimane Zouggari

Developed by John Seddon, Vanguard is one of the service organization development methods based on systems thinking. The method has been utilized for many years to enhance the service quality of organizations and lessen costs.

What is the Vanguard Method?

The Vanguard Method combines system thinking and inventory theory. The method was been influenced by Taiichi Ohno, William E. Deming, and Chris Argyris, among others. The method highlights that the way of thinking of top management determines the qualities and structure of the system that then identify the capability of the system.

Further, the Vanguard Method makes use of iterative Check-Plan-Do model to enhance organizational competence. Change is initiated through observing the current organization from systems thinking perspective.

• Identify the purpose of the system from the customer perspective
• Study the nature of demand coming to the system
• Understand how the system reacts to the demands
• Learn why this happens
• Determine what measures or policies cause issues in the flow of work
• Acknowledge the thinking behind the management and design of the system

When the knowledge of the existing organization grows and the reasons why the organization operates in a particular way are understood, it’s simple to change one’s own way of management and thinking practices.

Better Information Systems Investment

Also, the Vanguard Method is also utilized to enhance investment benefits of the organization in information systems. In case you didn’t know yet, information system investments are sometimes made with local needs in mind, or to improve inefficiently or from the perspective useless business processes of the customer. Through this, organizations could end up with lots of separate information systems, which are costly and complicated to integrate.

In such cases, the scenario is often made worse through trying to find a technological solution, for instance, by defining enterprise architectures or developing integration strategies. The result is that the organization is constrained by the information systems. Further, this influences the ability of the organization as well as the quality of the services it offers.

Steers Towards Rational Process Development

On the other hand, systems thinking has proved to be helpful in the process development, for instance in the implementation of the agile methods. As an alternative of doing stuff the right way in particular parts of the system, it steers towards doing the proper things within the entire system.

Theory of Variation is one of the main tools for the process development in systems thinking that aids understanding the natural variation in capability across the organization. The theory of variation includes the following:

• We must expect things to differ, they always do
• Understanding variation will tell you what to expect
• Understand the variation results to improvement, it results to work on the causes of the variation that are found within the system
• Understanding variation tells you if something has occurred.

The main message in systems thinking is that the system isn’t changed until there’s enough knowledge regarding the qualities of the system, and how it works.

— Slimane Zouggari

Are you one of those people who are able to approach each situation you face in the same way? Of course not. Few issues need complicated solutions, while some can be dealt with the most basic of steps. Sometimes, the concerns, which you encounter in business, will fall between those two extremes. Whatever the issues look like, which you’re experiencing in your organization today, Cynefin Framework could help you work towards a reasonable conclusion.

How does it work?

Instead of providing you with a problem-solving plan as is the case along with other tools, this framework helps you discover how you must be thinking about the issue in the first place. In most ways, this framework can be used to figure out how you must be dealing with an issue, and you could move into another problem-solving strategy if you want to get down to the business of searching a solution.

The core is divided into five contexts. The concept is to place the problem, which you’re experiencing into one of such specific contexts that will help you decide how that concern should be approached.

1. Obvious Context

This is the content, which the majority of business managers and owners would want to see their issues fall into, as it going to take the least number of work to fix problems in this part of the framework.

2. Complicated Context

Complicated issues are no stranger to organizations of all sizes and shapes, and such are problems, which are normally fixed by professionals in the particular field in question. For example, if you have a technical concern with your site, it’s more likely that the solution will come from someone in your IT Team. Even if you have enough decision makers and experienced managers outside of IT, these people will not normally have the expertise of the subject at hand, which is essential to make a smart move.

3. Complex Context

Complex may seem like the same thing as complicated; however, these are two different areas. If you move into the Complex Context of the Cynefin framework, you’re dealing with issues, which might not have a clear solution. You don’t need an expert to solve this – you might only need more information and time. For instance, assembling a team will work to your advantage. With a team of skilled people working on the problem, you must be able to deal with the problem right away.

4. Chaotic Context

It’s normally confusion, which reigns if you’re dealing with the Chaotic Context. Problems, which find themselves in this area of the framework have no certain link between cause and effect, and you might not have enough time to work through the information to find a good solution.

5. Disorder

This is the last ground in the Cynefin Framework. One of the challenges, which is linked with this part is the fact that you might not know when you’re at this point. Thus, it’s the gathering of information, which must be prioritized once the disorder is taking hold.

To sum up, utilizing Cynefin framework is an excellent way to get started on the procedure of problem-solving. This process is not going to solve all your concerns from beginning to end – but it’s going to help you get moving in the right way.

— Slimane Zouggari

What is the Walking Skeleton?

The first pattern of walking skeleton was first described around 1994. The name walking skeleton was applied between the years of 1994 to 1997. During 1999, the correlation to the Increment Rearchitecture has been found out. It is in this year that the walking skeleton was implemented in the system. The walking skeleton idea evolved from the conversation of Alistair and the project’s lead designer. The designer converted and explained to him about the project.

He said that they should have a system that would keep them on track of conversation with the other technical lead. The connection in the system should be applied for them to be able to transmit a single message that will go around the ring to each of the members. Because of this, a sudden idea came into his mind. The process of making the functionality of walking skeleton took so slow. It takes more than 3 months before it actually employed to the end users. They were just fascinated to discover the functionality of the system. However, it’s still incomplete, limited agile and still missing flesh of the functional application.

How Walking Skeleton Function?

Walking Skeleton refers to the tiny implementation in the system that is programmed to perform a real end to end test that need not use the final architecture in the production. On the other hand, it must be linked to the major architectural components involved in the project. This prototype of walking skeletons typically works in order to maintain the development of possible risks encountered in the project.

This also triggers the identification of every possible risk as much as possible. This is why implementing the use of walking skeleton decreases the compensation in case a certain circumstance of problems take place. In addition, if ever your system need requires a talk in any of the data stores, then it is a reliable option to use walking skeleton in that matter. They can perform the simple query in any of the data stores and even conduct simple request in any of the internal and external services. It is the only skeleton application present in the system that can function in many different ways.

Even though their agile is limited only in a certain specific task, they could do well. The parts of the walking skeleton are connected and it could actually walk in a manner of like exercising the system parts. Because of their limited agile, they walk in a minimal condition. The walking skeleton is not a prototype of a sort and of course, not a type of concept. In order for them to function, you should definitely write a test in a form of production codes. It will assert them to accept a request, pushes an empty message to the queue or pushes some content to S3.

Criticisms

This prototype of walking skeleton has no functional capacity to work fast, it requires time to wait for them to function accordingly. This usually leads to consumption of time just waiting for their action. Furthermore, it requires time also in exercising the deployment of the walking skeleton in the system. It requires time in looking for the many possible potential problems. Even though they are just good looking, an instant result is not guaranteed.

— Slimane Zouggari

History

The concept of the tiger team came from the innovation of NASA to come up with systematic solutions to the technical problems. These teams first focused on testing computer security in assistance to the military and aerospace

The agile team is hired to determine if the security and data system of an organization would be hacked or accessed. If the work of the team is successful, the team leave messages or notes that says “busted” or “the code is stolen.

These teams are made up of experienced hackers who have wide experience and expertise in attack communication channels and remote networks. The teams are on once focused on spying but later turned in solving a large number of IT problems for persona and businesses.

What is it?

Defined as gathering of experts, these teams are hired to make the important purpose of doing a project or an event. They are commonly tasked to solve and investigate and come up with solutions to certain problems and situations. Here, the team is tested according to the agility, decision making skills, communications they would do to finish the work.

How to?

The work of the team could be considered as limitless. The team are tasked to gather information about a certain problems so that they would come up with the best solutions for it. The scope of the work they have to do could be big or small depending to the assignment given to them.

The tiger team is required to be a team for days or even years. At this point, the members might meet on a seldom or regular basis. However, in doing this, they still need to meet the requirements given to them so that powerful events would be created.

Practical Examples

There are several kinds of Tiger teams created and all of them proved to be valued assets in solving problems. A few examples of these teams are the Red Cell or also called as the NSA Cyber Defense Tiger Team. This team was made by National Security Agency.

Furthermore, NSA Engineering and Safety Center or NESC had made a program that comprises of tiger teams. These teams are made up of scientists and engineers who are assigned to NASA centers. Their job is to solve big complex problems.

Existed from 2009 to 2011, the Gray Team was hired to solve medical problems in the countries of Afghanistan and Iraq. The common problems that were solved were related to stress disorder and the injuries made to the brain as a result of trauma.

Common pitfalls

In order to make the projects successful, first process requires the root of the problem. However, since deadlines are met, the team hardly gets near to the root of the problem that sometimes result an unsuccessful results

Criticisms

The work of the tiger teams require the right scope, money and time. However certain criticisms reflect that the not all the requirements are met by the team.

Hence, there are certain cases that the work is completed but there is a lack of small information to make the results function faster.

— Slimane Zouggari

Imagine you are in place with project managers, graphic designers and other experts on software development are gathered. You might think is an important meeting or an event. Well, it’s called a hackathon. Do you want to know what is it? Read on and have interesting information about it.

What is it?

Also known as hack day, or code fest, Hackathon is a sprint event wherein the computer programmers such as the interface designers gather or meet up to do a collaborative work on software projects. At some cases, Hackathons are made for social purposes or educational reasons. But the real purpose of the event is the creation of usable software.

When to use it?

The event is required if you want to build an app, hardware hack or building a site. At this point, the process of developing the software would take for 24 to 48 hours. The, then, the teams who are present in the event are required to present the demo of the things they have built. Here, they would eventually compete for the prizes.

When not to use it?

The event couldn’t be used if there are no ideas that could be turned into a new project. It is required that ideas would be built up so that new technologies would be produced. Furthermore, if you could not take the lack of sleep and the poor eating habits, programmers and designers are not advised to use it.

Concrete Examples

Since this event is famous and large attendees exist, there are notable examples of is the hack that is GroupMe. This is a kind of messaging app that is acquired by Skype for about $50 million. Other examples would be the “Like” button on Facebook and the Facebook Chat.  These worked showed during the internal company events.

Variants

As different programmers and designer are present in the event, the event is composed of different variants that yield in the successful creation of new technology. The variants are classified as web development, mobile apps, operating systems, development of video games and more.

Each of these variants results to a new technology that would be helpful to many people and businesses. Hence, there is a sure way of having the technological advances the world needs. This is due to the expertise of the agile experts.

Criticisms

Since Hackathons is an addicting event, the lack of sleep is criticized due to the result of codes that are poorly written. The concept of creating new technology is great by the lack of eating habits and sleep affects the health of programmers, causing them to be less agile.

However, despite the criticisms being thrown at the event, the demo and other results of the experts give birth to the new technology that would be proven essential to the world at all times.It might be addicting and as others say – tiring, still, this gathering is one of the most awaited events the world is able to witness as it gives lots of fascinating advantage for the people and the businesses they are running.

— Slimane Zouggari