Xebia Articles

Going Beyond the Agile Butterflies

Predicting incidents is the holy grail for modern IT organizations. It is no wonder that we see an increase in the usage of AI for prediction. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. But to what standard should we hold these predictions? When is a prediction important enough to wake you in the middle of the night? What is the level and type of information that ought to accompany a prediction? This blog introduces a new concept that is meant to raise the bar.

The increasingly intense competition for highly-skilled knowledge workers pulls organizations in two, seemingly opposing ways. On one hand, companies want to maintain stability to profit from team learning. On the other hand, they want to offer a dynamic environment to find and bind talented new people. But how do you create a balanced learning environment which appropriately nurtures both the stability to learn and the desire to grow simultaneously? 

Big projects take forever, never get done, and lose relevancy for before anyone uses them. Building things nobody uses is a waste of time, and money, but we spend fortunes doing it, over and over again. There is a better way.

Reputation systems are an essential part of the online world. We buy products, book hotel rooms and hire handymen based on the millions of reviews we find online. What can the blockchain add to the trustworthiness of these reviews? This third and last blog in my 3-part series exploring blockchain in practice attempts to answer this question.

“We know just what they want” is a common statement to come across while working on a project. It is expressed by people who fancy that their experience gives them the knowledge necessary to use substitute thinking. To decide for others what they want. The hope is that this will speed things up. However, it can lead to discovering later in the process that you are going about things the wrong way. Surely this is not a desired scenario. It would be much better to sympathize with your target group as much as possible.

From October 15 to 19, the second edition of GoDataFest, festival of data technology, took place. Every day of this event, organized by GoDataDriven, highlighted a specific technology or platform: AWS, Dataiku, Databricks, Google Cloud Platform and open-source.

You'll find it in almost every product owner's job description: "The product owner is responsible for maximizing value," or "for creating value". In order to grow, the real meaning of growth first has to be defined. After that, you can focus on execution and feedback loop. This is the first part of a blog series by Xebia Product Management.

Welcome to the third wave of Agile adoption - an age where organizations reinvent themselves around Scrum, and, if done well, the power trickles down to the people. These are the people who have the knowledge to make the best decisions, but this has exposed a new kind of problem. (This article was published in Agile NXT).

Blockchain technology can be used to give clients control of their data while also providing full transparency. This second article in a series on blockchain explains how the technology will eventually impact the business model of platform companies.