Sometimes you need someone to give you an outside perspective on your organization. Maybe you’re frustrated by the status quo and looking for support in making a change, or maybe you need someone to step into a leadership position on an interim basis while a leader is out on leave or while you search for someone on a permanent basis.
Here are some things I can do.
Interim / Fractional VP (Engineering or Quality)
I can step into a leadership role on a part time, temporary basis. With 25+ years leadership experience in technical organizations, I’m able to hit the ground running. If needed, I can also help you identify the right candidate to take over after me.
Observations and Recommendations
I can give you an outside perspective on your organization and opportunities for improvement. Examples of questions I can help you answer include:
- Why does it take so long to deliver?
- Why is our software so buggy?
- How can we increase the organization’s capacity to do feature development?
To answer these and other questions, I typically look at the overall software delivery flow from start to finish, paying particular attention to development and testing practices, cross-team dependencies, bottlenecks, conflicting priorities, interruptions, distractions, batch size, wait times, and feedback loops. I also look at any available data including defect reports, support tickets, and metrics.
If possible, I’ll follow one or more tiny changes all the way through the development cycle to provide a baseline of current time spent in each stage.
At the end of the engagement, I deliver a report that addresses the questions(s) along with recommendations for improving the particular area of focus.
Catalyst
Change is hard, even when you know exactly what to change. Often with transformation initiatives, you know the outcomes you want to achieve but it’s less clear how to get there.
If you are working to make your organization more nimble, deliver smaller increments more frequently, break down silos, or improve quality, I can act as an advisor and coach for you and your team. Working together, we’ll:
- Identify the key points of leverage to get the needle moving in the right direction
- Define and measure concrete, actionable near term goals
- Identify and address organizational impediments
- Facilitate cross-team coordination and collaboration
- Make the cultural shifts needed to make the change self-supporting
The result is visible progress toward your goals, improved collaboration and communication across the organization, and an organization capable of sustained improvement.