Product Managers, Ravi Jay, Culture Transformation Challenges

What do Product Managers joining a transforming organisation see?

Value, Value, Value! Demonstrate incremental value”. Clarion call is loud and clear.

One of the first things most transforming organisations develop are new agile processes that help them focus on the most valuable things to do. 

More often than not, it will be called a variant of ‘Digital Recommendation Board’. Folks from functional silos collaborate to consider value, estimate costs, weigh risks etc to ‘recommend’ portfolio epics that await decision by a Senior Executive / Board member.

Feel / sound familiar? It is possibly because the process has enough familiarity to current ways of working (/culture) for Portfolio managers (now rebadged as Product Managers in new Org) allowing actual control to be held centrally (/hierarchically.. as before) while introducing elements that appear to be devolved decision making and inclusivity.

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About Ravi Jay

Ravi is enthusiastic about all things Agile & Digital in service of building Products that people love to use. Welcomes a good chat on Conversational AI & Gamification. Talk to Ravi on Twitter @ravi_jay1 using #ThinkLookActDigital.

Generation Diversity in Enterprise Agile. Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of my Enterprise Agility blog series. In Enterprise Agility part 1, we looked at pace of agile adoption. In part 2, let’s discuss the impact of agile change programmes on people from different age generations.

Continue reading “Generation Diversity in Enterprise Agile. Part 2” »

About Simon Chandler

Simon feels passionately about continuous learning and improvement. Loves a good chat on Product Ownership & Agile Transformation.

How does Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics apply to everything?

How does Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics apply to everything?

Before we begin, let’s share our understanding about Syntactics, Semantics and Pragmatics with a simple refresher; broadly speaking, there are 3 kinds of ellipsis:
1) Syntax: Programming languages have constructs with which you write software to get machine to do something exactly how you want it. When we grew up, our parents told us how to ‘sit’ or ‘sleep’ or ‘stand’ – and so we did. And, we learned.
2) Semantics: Learning how to write software comes with the realization that there is more than way to tell the machine to do something exactly how you want it. Granted the programming constructs (and syntax) exist, but the way we craft commands differ from person to person. As we grew up, we learned that there is more than 1 way to sit, stand and sleep and more than once place to do it. And, we evolved our application of learning.
3) Pragmatics: As we started learning more than 1 programming language, we started to think about context and how to get what we want in a good way rather than focus on syntax itself. As we grew up, we started to think why we sit or sleep and realized that ‘rest/relaxation’ is what we want and there are many ways to get ‘rest’ and it depends on where we are and who we are with. And, we started thinking less about what we say/do and more about outcomes we want to drive in that context.
How important is context to understand meaning
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Digital marketing - What's in it for me - Social media marketing

Social collaboration in a corporate context

What is collaboration and is it important in a corporate context?
Is collaboration relevant in a decision making context?
Does social collaboration foster creativity?
Does it create silos?

These are some of the questions that bubble up when the subject of social collaboration in a workplace is brought up with friends or colleagues. Conversations about collaboration normally tend to branch out beyond the confines of ‘social’ so I’ll structure it based on three pillars: Tools, Process and Data. But first, let us look at the history of social collaboration to contextualise. Continue reading “Social collaboration in a corporate context” »

About Ravi Jay

Ravi is enthusiastic about all things Agile & Digital in service of building Products that people love to use. Welcomes a good chat on Conversational AI & Gamification. Talk to Ravi on Twitter @ravi_jay1 using #ThinkLookActDigital.

Richard branson, Branson as air hostess, branson loses bet

#Digital Lessons learned from a Stewardess

Digital-lessons-learned-from-stewardess-Richard-branson

I like visiting Poland during Winter (Brrrrr!) and it was last year that I found myself sitting on a flight back from Gdansk. I was startled when someone hit my elbow – it was the air hostess who was conducting the usual pre-take off routine – checking if the seat belts were fastened. Continue reading “#Digital Lessons learned from a Stewardess” »

About Ravi Jay

Ravi is enthusiastic about all things Agile & Digital in service of building Products that people love to use. Welcomes a good chat on Conversational AI & Gamification. Talk to Ravi on Twitter @ravi_jay1 using #ThinkLookActDigital.