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Concepts and Resources

This page contains some concepts, resources, and support material you'll hopefully find useful in understanding what product management and change agility embody. We will even have links and content on this page to publications and other sites that should be helpful in helping you structure your organization and in understanding how we can help you.

Publications

We take a great deal of pride in the accomplishments of our team members. Whenever contributions are made or are in progress, through publications, with the permission of the publisher, we present the articles here, with abstracts.

ZLE: Are You Ready For Launch?

This seminar addresses issues of launching and maintaining a Zero Latency Enterprise (ZLE), and the pitfalls of resting on an initially successful launch. The primary reason a company moves to a ZLE model is to more effectively server their customers - both internal and external, including ERP and e-Commerce. But in the sea of Change, the potentially daunting task of ZLE can either serve to energize or paralyze a corporation. Fortunately, there are islands of calm that can help make ZLE an ongoing success. The session presents what is required of the business of rolling out solutions, including: budgets, resources, and scheduling; business and technical processes of developing and deploying solutions into an already operating ZLE; and managing suppliers and vendors.

It’s Definitely Not Rocket Science

The influence of John F. Kennedy can be felt forty years later in almost everything we do in computing. The massive logistics required to put a human on the moon required the development of new methodologies to manage intricacies and interrelationships never before seen. This article goes into how this relates to what we do and how we do it today in computing and technology from the lessons garnered from that project.

The Implications of Becoming a Zero Latency Enterprise

The purpose of this article is to help senior management understand the organizational structures, infrastructure, practices and procedures, and initial and ongoing decisions that need to be made to implement and maintain the Zero Latency Enterprise (ZLE). Obviously, the first question to ask is why are we interested in ZLE? The answer, not surprisingly, is to more effectively service your customers. (Published as Are You Ready For The Zero Hour, Randall S. Becker, CIO Canada, September 2000)

Taking Back What is Ours

Careful planning enables you to successfully manage the ongoing costs of the physical technological infrastructure (telephones, computers, and networks). For months, or years, however, you have watched software development budgets mount while user satisfaction drops and you're having trouble reconciling the two. Outsourcing worked for a while, during the financial and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementations, but it's not working now that development has branched into custom solutions to deliver on your wisdom on how your business functions. You've just told your team that your company is now going to change one or more key subsystems to be developed in-house. This is known as back-sourcing, and it is a growing trend within companies whose primary business is not the development of software. This article lays out some of the key success-related issues you must address to take advantage of this trend. (Published as Taking Back What Is Ours, Randall S. Becker, CIO Canada, December 1999)

Resources

We all learn and grow and change. With careful analysis, we learn to take information and transform it into knowledge. Over time, with knowledge and experience, we gain wisdom. This section contains insights into how relationships transform with change.

The Ten F's

The purpose of the architectural design process is to balance many diverse, and often conflicting, objectives. It is an ongoing creative process providing for the deliverability of a vision. This article introduces each of the F's of architecture.

The Six C's

The team dynamics model used in facilitation assumes that a team is already set up and functioning. Most often, teams will exhibit confrontational or coexistence attributes. The innate desire of the facilitator is to move team members into a co-ownership environment. This usually takes time and much work. All was not without hope before facilitation was introduced, however. Good meeting chairs were generally able to move meeting participants into cooperative postures with relative ease. Collaboration was typically the unmet desire. This article introduces each of the C's.

The Six R's

The relationships dynamics model used by Nexbridge assumes that relationships are already set up and functioning. Relationships, in our models are typically between producers (developers) and consumers (users). Most often, teams will, in general, exhibit reluctance attributes. Our goal is to improve the relationship to and maintain it in a responsiveness state rather than letting it sink down to revolt. Time is usually not on the side of either the producer or consumer. As time goes by, inaction or inappropriate action causes the relationship to decay. This article introduces each of the R's.

Deep Thoughts

Sometimes we just have to sit back and absorb some strange ideas. Part of dealing with change is accepting that it's not a possibility, or a probability, but a certainty. We've tried to put together some lighter reading that will help you think about how the world changes, and how to recognize it when it happens.