Our Perspectives

Virtual class 2.0 – help on the ground

by Shiv Sivakumar | Oct 26, 2020 | Agile | 3 Comments

Suppose you as a trainer have conducted several editions of a highly experiential program, say, in leadership development, where class interaction and participant activities in a physical classroom played a vital role. And now, you are required to deliver the program...

The Innovator’s Dilemma

by S Srinivasan | Oct 21, 2020 | Business Agility | 2 Comments

Background Today, it is innovation that defines the very existence of any organization that aspires to make it big. The corollary, even a leader, who does not catch up with an innovation by a smaller up-start could soon reach their doom. Agility in innovation has...

The Innovator’s Dilemma: Customer Obsession

by S Srinivasan | Oct 21, 2020 | Business Agility, Digital Transformation | 0 Comments

Background In today’s world ask many a CXO – They would swear by the buzz on Customer Obsession. Some would go to the extent of saying that is the only purpose of their organization. Ask the management gurus – what is the biggest cause of an enterprise failing. They...

Digitally Speaking: The Future of software development and why the business world should bother

by Ramakrishnan Sethuraman | Oct 17, 2020 | Agile, Business Agility, Digital Transformation | 0 Comments

The crux of digitally transforming a business is all about making the business more agile in anticipating and responding to the customer wants and needs in the context of a much more networked business ecosystem; where every player brings an incremental value to the...

Be in the Game

by Zafar Ahmad | Oct 6, 2020 | Personal Growth | 1 Comment

Centuries ago, Robert the Bruce was the king of Scotland. England was at war with Scotland to make it a part of England. King Bruce led many battles, six times to be precise, against England and got defeated. Finally,...

One (Team) size and structure does not fit all

by Shiv Sivaguru | Oct 4, 2020 | Agile | 0 Comments

How does leadership determine how big a team they need (may be organized in multiple scrum / kanban teams) to support a given demand in a portfolio or a program? This is a very involved answer, and, like most answers related to adopting Agile practices, it depends. If...

Some fun with Agile

by Paramu Kurumathur | Sep 23, 2020 | Agile, Business Agility | 2 Comments

We all know that these are desperate times. The beast called COVID-19 has possessed us like the very devil, and won’t let go. The economy is down, many people have lost their jobs and livelihood. There are tantalizing stories of vaccines coming out soon. But, when...

CHOW #213: Engagement challenges during remote working context

by Vishu | Sep 13, 2020 | Chow, Mindfulness, Personal Growth | 0 Comments

As an Agile Coach, I have observed that many people are struggling with the new engagement context due to remote working arrangements – multitasking at home with kids & other family members and house hold activities, managing attention/focus, not coming on...

Three 3-minute Mindful Practices for remote working hazards

by Vishu | Sep 13, 2020 | Leadership, Mindfulness, Personal Growth | 1 Comment

Covid-19 has brought in forced locked down and remote working situations all over the world. It has also forced online learning classes for students of all ages. All this means all people, young and old, are spending more time with computers, mobile phones, tablets...

7 steps in on-boarding a coach – Be Agile!

by Shiv Sivakumar | Sep 4, 2020 | Agile | 0 Comments

If you are an Agile team coach, at some point you may have taken over from another coach or on-boarded a new coach to take your place. When I did a snap poll of our fellow-coaches, it turns out that there is much scope for improvement in on-boarding situations....

Ferris – The Coaching Assistant

by Raja Subramanian | Aug 29, 2020 | Coaching | 0 Comments

Ferris is our platform that aims to assist in augmenting: The collaboration between a coach and a protege The visibility of the coaching plan. Coach The coach is an abstraction in the Ferris platform. The coach can be a doctor, an executive, a fund manager, or a...

SPECS – A Practical Approach to ‘Transforming the Middle’

by Anantha Natarajan | Aug 28, 2020 | Agile, Coaching, Leadership | 5 Comments

One of the key challenges of major Agile transformation efforts in organizations has been the transformation of the middle layers - sometimes called the ‘frozen middle’. Typically the middle layer of the organization is least ‘touched’ in Agile Transformation...

Cultivating an Agile mindset: my personal journey

by Shivaram Venkat | Aug 24, 2020 | Agile, Business Agility | 6 Comments

About 20 years back, I was a hardcore developer. My focus was on technology and I didn’t put in much effort in understanding the holistic view of the project or how the requirements benefitted customers. I was the technical lead on the Asset Discovery Management...

Digitally Speaking: Customer-Centric Culture – What I learnt from 3 Stories (Part 2 of 2)

by Ramakrishnan Sethuraman | Aug 24, 2020 | Agile, Digital Transformation, Leadership | 0 Comments

Please refer to Part 1 of this blog for the context. Here are the other two stories! Putting yourself in the shoes of the customer – Role Play with Humour My next story comes from a very key engagement we had with one of my strategic Client Accounts. This was a...

Digitally Speaking: Customer-Centric Culture – What I learnt from 3 Stories (Part 1 of 2)

by Ramakrishnan Sethuraman | Aug 24, 2020 | Agile, Digital Transformation, Leadership | 4 Comments

A few months back when I was speaking with the CIO of a retail business, he told me proudly how they have doubled down on all efforts to use the latest conversational technologies to engage with their customers online. My curiosity stoked, I decided to check out how...