Xebia Articles

Suppose you discover a great business case for a voice application and now you want to develop one yourself. In this article, Xebia guru Mike Woudenberg shares his experience of using Google Dialogflow—software designed to model voice-interfaces—to do just that.

With increasing customer demands, system reliability becomes more critical by the second. You can’t prevent all incidents, but you can learn from them—making your systems more resilient, reliable and capable of providing the services your customers need.

Your iceberg is melting. Your cheese is being moved–at light speed. The balance
of society has rapidly shifted from industrial (often physical) labor to digital (often virtual) work.
It profoundly changes the fabric of society and our social systems. The industrial paradigm is rendered useless. The need for agility is bigger than ever. Hence, the value of the Agile paradigm, today and in the foreseeable future.

In the current digital era, change is accelerating at an exponential rate. Businesses must “adapt or die” if they want to survive. To do this, they are looking for new ways to disrupt and innovate their market or industry, in most cases in a digital way. However, to increase their chances of success, organizations should take into account three key guiding principles for digital innovation.

To meet the digital demand of the 21st century, an increasing number of companies have chosen the Agile business model. Cloud-native systems, embracing social media, mobile platforms, continuous feedback, the predictive capabilities of (big) data, and other technologies all are extensions of this organizational transformation.

For the last twenty-five years, I’ve enjoyed working with teams to improve them.
I've worked with all kinds of teams, from those that barely make progress to those that turn everything they touch into a success. What sets these teams at opposite ends of the spectrum? What makes a team a winning one?

Organizational agility requires a cultural transition. Too often, transformations get stuck in the blueprints of pre-planned waves of change. In large, top-down transition projects, change implementation is mandated across the organization. This method is rarely effective and often merely establishes a limited, temporary effect. The new way of change consists of many micro-interventions from leadership that bring about a mega-change. The micro-interventions are small, powerful, and applicable at any time. These bring about a more effective organization with a culture to match.

This article is published in . Agile NXT is the magazine full of inspiration for professionals on the emerging Agile journey. Theme of #2: New Insights for Agile Performance Management.

Have you ever gone to the gym in January? If so, you’ve seen just how difficult it is to change behavior. Everyone has a New Year’s resolution to get into better shape or lose those extra holiday season pounds, so at first, the gym is very crowded. But within a few weeks, everyone gives up on trying to change, stops going, and the gym turns quiet again. Why? What does it take to actually change behavior in the long term, and why is it so important in business?

When leading change in an organization, what guides and influences new behavior? What makes it stick? Judo offers a gentle way of approaching change. Based on principles like seiryoku zenyo, which means “maximum efficient use of energy,” it poses questions such as, “What if everyone did just this one thing? Would the rest fall into place?” Change doesn’t happen overnight, but by conducting mini-experiments, and adjusting along the way, great, and lasting change can occur. Here are six levers of influence from the path to the Judo black belt that could make you a better leader in business.