Linchpin Labs

My first step toward TDD Vinay was convinced by the TDD approach, but he wasn't sure where to start. Unfortunately, he didn't have the chance to use an xUnit family tool because of time and training needs. But Vinay was keen to start following TDD myself, so he discussed the concept with the team and set some rules: Write the unit test cases related to any functionality in the document first, prior to writing the code. Always use track changes in the document (this helps ensure that test cases are written first and tested later). Mark the status of the test case "fail," since no code will yet have been written to implement that functionality. Write enough code to implement the functionality. Test the unit test cases written for that functionality, and update the status. It was tough to get the entire team to follow these rules. And, as I'd expected, Vinay received strong resistance from everyone. One question raised by the team was how to write a test...

Retail CIOs & Digital, Innovation by Linchpins Source, Courtesy & Inspiration Accelerating Digital Innovation in Retail - https://www.bcg.com/en-in/publications/2018/accelerating-digital-innovation-retail.aspx

Teams (small & agile teams) launch rockets, diffuse bombs, win games, build highly scalable & always available software, make ships , kill terrorists! So, what are practices of Small Agile Teams.

Organization of the future (2030 and beyond) will adopt and practice these.

Fast Agility ~ A practitioner’s view Every day, Agile is practiced by more than 18 million software professionals. It has become the foundation for digital transformation projects. Every customer and team want to be working only on Agile mode. Surprisingly, Agile is not only practiced in software development. It has expanded the arena and named itself as Agile Marketing, Agile Security and more. The elements for making Agile can be Scrum, Kanban, XP et al. However, real Agility cannot be experienced by the team when the below things are not enabled. Team feels fast with self-service capabilities. i.e. Queues kill agility. Feels fast when tasks are clear. i.e. thinking what does that mean feels slow. Turning back to ask feels fast. i.e. Email & Skype chat feels slow. Search feels fast. i.e. Clicking on the documents feel slow. Meeting free days feel fast i.e. busy calendar days feels slow. Using collaboration tools feel fast i.e. Teams competing on multiple products fe...

Courtesy & Inspirations 1. Jason Yip – Agile Coach @ Spotify 2. Dave West CEO @ Scrum.org 3. Jayne Gyrol – CEO @ DevOps institute 4. Slides of Jason Yip - What does Speed mean in software product delivery? 5. Publication - The Convergence of Scrum and DevOps

Agile, the second most pronounced word next to 'Customer' in every company and team today. Everyone is embarking on Agile to increase the Speed To Value. Organizations and teams leaping on to Agile journey may fail, if they do not understand and follow the ground rules. The ground rules are easy to learn and takes a life time to master. This, 6 Point Agenda, would help application leaders understand the challenge and direction; grasp the current condition and set the agenda for growth. 6 Point Agenda 1. Find out what problems to solve Getting into the Agile without acknowledging the problems of the team or understanding the direction of the firm would lead to nowhere. There are myriads of tools and frameworks available outside. Before purchasing the fix know your problem and be clear on outcomes expected and target condition.  2. Align the structure The team working on any of the following unions would not be able to follow the Agile principles and values...

Whenever you read explanations about why a company is so successful, inevitably its success was attributed to the sheer brilliance of its management's team. Then in few years, the company fell off the cliff and began to unravel very quickly. When you read the explanations about why it had stumbled so badly, it was always attributed to the same management team; the folks running the company who had earned unfettered praise for so long. (1) This disturbed Clayton  Christensen   for a long years.  Clayton framed the question  'Gee, how could smart people get so stupid so fast?' Its because of bad management and doing dumb things.  Bryan Eisenberg, in his book, Be like Amazon explains about dumb things succinctly as it goes below.  Why do smart people do dumb things? Because dumb things produce immediate results. So immediate results are that bad? No. Immediate results aren’t always bad. They’re only bad when the actions you take to generate those re...

A Hustle I observed today. This is unusal and may be the new norm. This is applicable to everyone working in the company. You can be from Marketing, Pre-Sales, Engineering, Support, Technical Documentation, Quality, CXO or anyone.  Observed an urge to change. Try something new. Fail on that and Learn. Fear of startups or nimble companies eating our lunch.  Everyone becoming impatient supernaturally. Measuring the delay in milliseconds to provide uber customer experience and meeting the customer promises. They dont know where to start and how to do it. But figuring it out.  But the only thing is, we will be much better than yesterday and today by tomorrow. That is obvious. Changing for good.  Finally, the below image summaries, all my observations in just 32 words.

Today every company talks about Culture. What does it mean, in reality? or in simple words?  This is what it is, 'what would your people do when you leave them alone'.  Here are some examples.   Are they trying new ideas?  Are they thinking about providing superior customer experience? Are they showing up on time? Are they honoring the commitments? and many more! Inspiration Ben Horowitz - Cofounder - a16z http://a16z.com/2017/03/04/culture-and-revolution-ben-horowitz-toussaint-louverture/

DevOps, the most pronounced word for making releases faster in all software companies. In fact, it is part of Agile!  It is well known that Development + Operations form the DevOps. But it originates from manufacturing industry; where Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, conceived and popularized the concept ‘Theory Of Constraints’ to make smooth flow of work.  For DevOps, Gene Kim popularized the concept with his books ‘The Phoenix Project’ and ‘The DevOps Handbook’.  While, everyone thinking and discussing on DevOps, this post would visualize the nut and bolts of DevOps.  Remember this analogy! Manufacturing => Theory of Constraints : IT => DevOps More details on DevOps @  http://eepurl.com/cHnqAb  & https://elink.io/p/devops-exclusive

Everyone talks about being Agile. Not just Agile in a project but making the entire business agile. This post would demystify ‘Business Agility’ in simple terms. 

Today, everyone talks about going Digital. Renowned strategy and customer experience consulting firms have renewed themselves as Digital Transformation agency. Softskill trainers have become Digital marketing consultants. Large industrial conglomerates have become Digital industrial company by a creating a platform for Digital aficionados to develop custom apps. New roles such as Chief Digital Officer, Data scientist, Experience designer, Digital evangelist and many more are evolving. What are these roles to do with? Where should I start my Digital journey?  Here is a very simple framework! Remember! To keep up the Brand promise, always deliver 1. Speed (Adopt Agile & DevOps) 2. Accuracy & Authenticity ( Create Cognitive / Sentient Systems) 3. Codify ‘Trust' Courtesy to 1. Book titled 'Disrupting Digital Business' - Ray 'R' Wang 2. Book titled 'Leading Digital' - Diddier Bonnet 3. eBook titled 'Digitally Rem...

In this article, we see about some of the proven selling techniques developed and adopted by Elmer Wheeler and how it has been applied in selling various goods. The techniques mentioned here are referred from Elmer Wheeler’s book titled ‘Tested sentences that sell’. Mr. Wheeler’s purpose in this book to help the salesman by showing him how to add powerful sales words and techniques so that he will always have complete command over any selling situation. The insights he shares and describes are the result of his 10 year study of and thinking about what successful salesmen, of all kinds are saying and doing to make more sales. The rules shared here are based on ‘5 Wheelerpoints’; it is explained to you in relation to whatever you are selling. 5 Wheelerpoints are Don’t sell the steak – sell the sizzle. Don’t write – Telegraph Say it with Flowers Don’t ask if – ask which! Watch your bark! Don’t sell the steak – sell the sizzle The ‘sizzle’ is the biggest selling point ...

In this article, we brief on what the architect of disruptive innovation Clayton Christensen explained in his seminal work called disruptive theory. This contains the edited excerpts of ‘ What is disruptive innovation ’ article published in Harvard Business Review. We also considered the tools, frameworks and concepts from Blue Ocean Strategy developed by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, as we feel that the Indian companies adopt the essence of both the Disruptive Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy ideas. Clayton clarifies Disruption is a process where by a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. Specifically, as incumbents focus on improving their product and services for the most demanding customers, new entrants prove disruptive by successfully targeting those overlooked segments and by delivering more suitable functionality frequently at lower price. And any product or service to be considered as disruptive in...