Notes from YOW! 2014: Jez Humble on ‘The Lean Enterprise’

I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

A man in a suit, who probably works for an enterprise, running in a marathon and looking very agileJez Humble (@jezhumble), co-author of ‘Continuous Delivery’, spoke on The Lean Enterprise, specifically “the principles that enable rapid, software-driven innovation at scale” and how to transform organisations. (Slides)

He briefly covered the three horizons method of innovation and highlighted that you actually need to plan and be executing on all 3 at any one time. They also need separate management styles and reporting lines so that they don’t try to squash each other in departmental trade-offs or management bunfights. The two management styles are explore (discover new stuff) and exploit (capitalise on existing assets). Continue reading

Meetup Digest: Sydney FinTech Startups (April 2013)

I went along to the Sydney FinTech Startup Meetup for the first time tonight.

Keyboard keys spelling out 'money' sitting on top of a lot of coinsIt was an interesting meeting as the speakers were all from the Westpac Group, one of the biggest, oldest companies in Australia, which hardly seems appropriate to the Startup scene. However, the guys had a lot to say about how they see the current banking markets and what the bank’s take on innovation and interaction with small companies looks like. From my point of view (as an employee of a financial startup that’s recently hit profitability and is now entering a scaling stage) it was interesting to listen to the challenges that these big companies face and to think about how we might try to avoid the same traps as we grow. Continue reading