Keyword Incremental Delivery

IndigoBlue has a long held view that incremental delivery, and the supporting incremental strategy, is core to the success of Agile management. This tenet is the basis for our governance framework and our approach to managing Agile at scale.  Last week I was presented with an illustration of this in the shape of one of our customers that has recently piloted the use of Agile in their office in the States.

I had the privilege of presenting a keynote at the Agile Business Conference last week "Delivering Agile in Government; Learning Lessons from the Commercial Sector", together with Jerrett Myer of the IfG (Institute for Government).

The winner of the UK IT Industry IT Project Team of the Year gave a talk that I went to yesterday at the BCS. The project was the complete revamp of the London Borough of Southwark's website into a highly successful, fresh, engaging and efficient online channel.

There were a number of aspects of their approach that really resonated for me ...

“De minimis non curat lex - the law does not concern itself with trifles.” This phrase is often used in cases where an item is so insignificant that a court declines to make a judgement; or, by me, to dismiss a colleague’s certain victory in an argument, usually with an airy wave of the hand.

It is interesting that the law has codified something that most of us struggle with throughout our working lives. We are overwhelmed with trifling objects, often urgent and simple to address and so we allow ourselves to complete them and ignore the important, higher priority items.