InfoQ Homepage Business Value Content on InfoQ
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AnyPresence Soups up Enterprise MBaaS Platform- Part 1 of 2
Mobile Backend as a Service provider AnyPresence continues to hone their chops. Launching the fifth update to their self-titled platform geared for the enterprise. Co-founder Rich Mendis provides some insights for InfoQ readers…
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Applying the Lean Startup Approach in Enterprises
Coming to decisions about which products to build or which features to add to existing products can be difficult. The lean startup approach can help to get insight into the needs of customers, and to build a sustainable business around a set of products and services that serves those needs. How can enterprises adopt the lean startup approach to become more innovative and competitive?
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Stories of Using Real Options to Take Decisions
Projects and product development is one long series of difficult decisions, says Pascal Van Cauwenberghe. Real Options can help you to take the right decision at the right time, even under difficult circumstances. At the Agile Tour Brussels conference, Pascal presented stories of his experiences with using real options in decision taking.
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Benefits of Combining Agile and Lean Startup
Enterprises want to increase their capability to deliver value to customers in less time. Many adopt agile software development to iteratively develop and deliver software solutions. Lean startup aims to support developing new businesses and products. Several authors shared their views on how combining agile and lean startup methods can be beneficial.
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Agile Retrospectives, Can You Skip Them?
Teams sometimes consider to skip a retrospective meeting, when they feel time pressure, or do not see direct benefits of doing one. Next they question themselves if they have to keep doing retrospectives? Agile retrospectives help teams to learn and improve continuously, and there are valid reasons to keep doing them also with mature teams.
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Making Time for Innovation in Enterprises
To stay competitive, enterprises look for ways to do innovation inside their organization. A first step can be to make time available which people can use to think about new products and services and discuss ideas and develop concepts, for instance with a dedicated “full-time” innovation team, by arranging frequent innovation time-slots, or by organizing short and intense innovation workshops.
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The Flexibility of Agile: Flaw or Strength?
The principle of “responding to change over following a plan”, is it a strength or a flexibility that can’t work in practice? For example, what about agile projects that had difficulties managing changes and customers who expect too much flexibility? Can agile not live up to its promises, or is it the way that teams and organizations have adopted agile that is causing the problems?
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Simplicity for Building the Right Thing
At GOTO Amsterdam 2013, Russ Miles did a lightning talk about building the right thing in 5 questions: the 4 questions from impact mapping “Why? Who? How? and What?” and one additional question “What assumptions underpin everything?”. InfoQ did an interview with him about building the right thing using simplicity.
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Finding Ways to Improve Business – IT Collaboration
Collaboration between business and IT can be a problem in enterprises. People are finding ways to better support the business needs and increase the business value of IT, using business IT fusion, DevOps or sociocracy.
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Just How Much Do Failed IT Projects Cost?
Failed IT projects have a significant impact on the global economy, and on the public perception of the IT industry. Just how much is wasted on failed IT? In 2009 it was estimated to be over 6 Trillion USD. Not confident of those results Michael Krigsman got two experts to calculate the wasted funds and came to a "mere" 3 Trillion dollars.
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"February Revolution" Aims to Focus Software Delivery on Business Outcomes
In February 2013 a group of authors, speakers, consultants and practitioners met to identify the common elements in their approaches to focusing software delivery on business outcomes. The group identified some underlying principles and practical steps that organisations and teams can take to help ensure the products they "build the right product" to maximize business value.
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Business of Software Engineering - Throughput Accounting and the Theory of Constraints
In his recent blog posting “Theory of Constraints and Software Engineering” Steve Tendon addresses why throughput accounting should be preferred over cost accounting in software development organizations. He also provides a simple model for throughput accounting that is applicable to software engineering.
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Agile's Next Wave: Transforming the Business
A recent Forrester report gives evidence to the advance of agility into the business world. This article reviews this trend and some of its potential implications.
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The Lean Startup Frenzy
Is the Lean Startup movement another fad or a real source of value creation? The implications of the latter are extreme. If Lean Startup is a real way to achieve consistent success in new ventures then Eric Ries may have cracked the code toward persistent venture success and ultimately: wealth creation.
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Product Backlog Ordering, Sequence for Success
Historically, some product owners have prioritized backlogs by making pairwise comparison of projected economic return between two items in isolation. Successful Agile teams often take a holistic approach, accounting for risk, dependencies, and the complex interplay among and across backlog items.