Stand Back and Deliver Accelerating Business Agility

by Pixton, Pollyanna; Nickolaisen, Niel; Little, Todd; McDonald, Kent J.

• ISBN13: 9780321572882
• ISBN10: 0321572882
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-06-23
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

Whether you're leading an organization, a team, or a project, Stand Back and Deliver gives you the agile leadership tools you'll need to achieve breakthrough levels of performance. This book brings together immediately usable frameworks and step-by-step processes that help you focus all your efforts where they matter most: delivering business value and building competitive advantage.

Author Biography

Pollyanna Pixton is an internationally recognized expert on collaborative leadership who has worked and consulted with companies and organizations for thirty-eight years. She is president of Evolutionary Systems and director of the Institute of Collaborative Leadership. Niel Nickolaisen is CIO and director of strategic planning at Headwaters, Inc. Todd Little has held a number of senior leadership positions including director of software and technology at Landmark Graphics, a subsidiary of Halliburton. For more than thirty years he has developed-and led teams developing-commercial software applications, primarily for oil and gas exploration and production. Kent McDonald has nearly fifteen years of experience as a project and program manager in industries ranging from automotive to financial services.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xv
About the Authors	p. xix
Introduction to Key Principles	p. 1
What Could Go Wrong?	p. 1
What Went Right	p. 3
Why Do We Do This to Ourselves?	p. 5
A Framework of Effective Tools	p. 6
Summary	p. 9
Purpose	p. 11
The Big Ideas	p. 11
An IT Project Death March	p. 11
Aligning on Purpose	p. 14
Usable Strategy and the Purpose Alignment Model	p. 18
Getting Started	p. 33
Summary	p. 39
Collaboration	p. 41
The Big Ideas	p. 41
Picking Money Up Off the Floor	p. 41
Collaboration: Step by Step	p. 43
Leading Collaboration	p. 53
Putting These Tools to Work	p. 63
Summary	p. 65
Delivery	p. 67
The Big Ideas	p. 67
Case Study: The Swiss Stock Exchange	p. 67
All Projects Are Not Created Equal	p. 68
Assessing Project Uncertainty and Complexity	p. 72
Case Study: Integrating Software by Integrating People	p. 76
Case Study: Time Is on Our Side	p. 79
Case Study: The Swiss Stock Exchange Revisited	p. 80
Using the Assessment to Reduce Risk	p. 83
Product Life Cycle	p. 86
Case Study: A Lot of Bull	p. 87
Leadership Development	p. 89
Portfolio Assessment	p. 92
Summary	p. 93
Decisions	p. 95
The Big Ideas	p. 95
What Do We Do? When Do We Do it?	p. 95
Building a Value Model	p. 98
It's a Conversation, Not a Number	p. 106
Do We Have to Decide This Today?	p. 108
Deliver in Chunks to Embrace Change in the Marketplace	p. 110
Case Study: Improved Customer Retention	p. 112
Case Study: An Agile Conference	p. 115
Decisions and Portfolio Management	p. 117
Summary	p. 121
Leadership "Tipping Point"	p. 123
The Big Idea	p. 123
Stepping Back	p. 123
Case Study: Leaving Money on the Floor	p. 124
All This Stuff Is Fine and Good-But Where Do I Start?	p. 133
Stepping Up	p. 138
Summary	p. 141
Summary	p. 143
Putting These Tools into Action	p. 143
Purpose Alignment Model	p. 143
Leading Collaboration	p. 145
Context Leadership Model	p. 146
Value-Based Decision Making	p. 151
Index	p. 153
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