Heiko Stapf 🥤

Sun Tzu and Military Design Thinking / Alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen ? One of our favorite quotes in our early defence / defense thought leadership presentations was: " If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle" Sun Tzu. The strategy principles of Sun Tzu, as outlined in his famous work “The Art of War,” and the modern concept of design thinking are related in that both involve a deep understanding of the context and environment to achieve successful outcomes. Sun Tzu’s strategy emphasizes the importance of knowing oneself and the enemy, adapting to changing circumstances, and the use of deception and surprise to outmaneuver opponents. These principles can be applied to various fields beyond military, including business and personal endeavors. Design thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that involves empathy, creativity, and rationality to meet user needs and solve complex problems. It’s a human-centered approach that encourages understanding the user, challenging assumptions, and redefining problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions. Both Sun Tzu’s strategy and design thinking require a strategic approach to planning and decision-making. They share a common goal of achieving success through careful analysis, planning, and execution. Sun Tzu’s focus on strategic advantage and design thinking’s emphasis on innovation and user experience can complement each other in developing robust strategies for business, technology, and other areas. For instance, Sun Tzu’s lesson that “strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” can be seen as analogous to the design thinking principle that without a clear understanding of the user’s needs and the problem at hand, any solution or tactic will be ineffective. In essence, both methodologies advocate for a thoughtful approach to challenges, where understanding the broader context and having a clear strategy are crucial for success. Currently I am missing the FOCUS or Schwerpunkt and the strategy principles of Sun Tzu in todays discussions ... we are more discussing which’s tools or canvas … David Lincourt #Designthinking #militarydesignthinking #suntzu #OODALOOP #Schwerpunkt

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Did you hear them say: "Agile teams cannot keep deadlines"? It's a common misunderstanding of agile methods. In fact, agile methods are better at keeping deadlines than traditional methods! 👇 This article explains how to deliver on time with agile methods https://lnkd.in/ehnGycDU #agile #deadline

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"Story points are crap! Stakeholders want hours, days and dates!" Do you hear that sometimes when you propose estimating in story points or t-shirt sizes? Some managers misunderstand story point (SP) estimates as a simple kinda esoteric layer to disguise real person hour estimates. This often ends in them establishing a fixed "exchange rate" between SP and person hours. But that completely misses the point of story points and relative estimation! Yet, stakeholders are right to demand specific date ranges instead of abstract SP. They need something to plan with. And the bridge between abstract story points and specific date ranges is the concept of 👉 VELOCITY Understanding velocity lets agile teams make pretty precise predictions of when stakeholders can expect to get certain features. I explain the concept and quirks of velocity in this article in the Agile Compass: https://lnkd.in/ekzHibJQ #agile #velocity #productmanagement

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Join us at our next #Agile #Coaching Exchange with Jan Neudecker. His talk is 'Agile is a lifestyle'. You can find out more about the session here: https://lnkd.in/edp75fjZ See you there!

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Who has not played the Ball Point game yet? Despite its omnipresence and its simplicity, I love how much learning this game packs into a short amount of time! Getting teams started on fundamental Scrum and general agile concepts is fun and easy that way. Within a few minutes they not only learn, but really grasp important Scrum and agile concepts: 🎾 Scrum sprints with plannings and retrospectives 🎾 Estimating 🎾 Continuous improvement 🎾 Time-boxing 🎾 Sustainable pace Let alone enjoying team work, failure culture and fun! When have you last played the Ball Point Game with a team? #scrum #agile #games

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“You can’t keep a deadline with agile” - true or not? The truth is: agile methods are much better at keeping deadlines or any other constraints. What it takes is 👉 knowing what you want and 👉 learning how to apply agile methods I wrote about how to keep deadlines with agile methods in the Agile Compass: https://lnkd.in/ehnGycDU #agile #projectmanagement #deadlines

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Are you still managing dependencies? Maybe it’s time to think about a different and more agile approach. I write about it in the Agile Compass: https://lnkd.in/gZBYnrSt #agile #projectmanagement #dependencies

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I'm excited to initiate a discussion about Supervision coaching within the agile framework. It's important to clarify that Supervision is distinct from Intervision (Kollegiale Beratung); it focuses on coaching with a broader perspective encompassing Me, We, and Us. I greatly appreciated the opportunity to attend the EMCC Training led by Virginia Anderson, MBA, PCC, ORSCC, CAC, CPCC, which aimed at enhancing the Certified Agile Coaching curriculum. Agile has very little to do with methods and tools. I will explain during these days?

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Writing articles for agile practitioners in the Biergarten 🍻 My Agile Compass has helped many agile practitioners to improve their daily work. I’m proud that my writing has an impact. Today I’m writing in a Biergarten in Munich. If you’re not receiving the Agile Compass yet, you can start here: https://lnkd.in/ePnQUGMv Prost! #agile #agilecoach #scrummaster

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Final seats remaining for next week's agile leadership training in Basel - with Management 3.0. Join us, rare opportunity to practice and to connect in person: https://lnkd.in/denkFXSM #transparency #selfmanagement #agile #decisionmaking #motivation #leadership #organisationaldevelopment #hr #changemanagement

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A recent #Aufwachfrage asked: Is ethical behavior and capitalism possible at the same time? Dirk Paessler offered a counter question: "Is it even ethical to not do capitalism?" My answer was too long for a comment so I use a new post. --- I don't know a better alternative to capitalism - although its many flaws. To say it with an adaption of Winston Churchill's quote about democracy: "Capitalism is the worst economic system except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". I am aware that it's because of capitalism that I type these lines on a fancy MacBook sitting in my own house. I would be far worse off without capitalism. Nevertheless, a working child in a sweat shop in Bangladesh would probably answer the question very differently. Same for a refugee fleeing from the outcome of the climate crisis. I tend to answer Dirk's initial question with "no, it wouldn't be ethical to not do capitalism". Wow, did I really write this? Let's stop. I have to think about different types of companies first. UNETHICAL COMPANIES I guess, there are not many companies that act unethical on purpose. What comes to mind are tobacco enterprises hiding studies about health risks of smoking or oil companies inventing the concept of the individual CO2 footprint to distract from their own responsibilities. Very unethical for me are investment banks knowingly selling useless financial products and risking a worldwide financial crisis. Banks involved in Cum-Cum / Cum-Ex I consider as very unethical as well. NOT UNETHICAL COMPANIES Probably most companies try to not act unethical. I think, most companies aim to not exploit their employees and to not do tax fraud. That's already a lot. ETHICS AGNOSTIC COMPANIES This is my name for organizations that just fade out ethics. They are not unethical or even evil per se, ethics is just something that isn't part of the leader's thinking. When they act in an ethical way it might be just a coincidence. Striving for profit is by far the strongest guiding principle of those companies. For this kind of organizations, my hypothesis is that capitalism and ethics are NOT possible at the same time. ETHICAL COMPANIES There are a few companies with the outspoken purpose of acting ethical and advance society and mankind (while making money to be able to implement their purpose). Companies/organizations trying to capture CO2 to fight the climate crisis come to mind. Working for such a company is desirable for some of us (myself included). My (current) conclusion: Capitalism and acting ethical is possible at the same time in general. Nevertheless, I deem it very hard for companies to tame the striving for even more profit or to avoid greed. It might be very hard for those companies to survive and not flip to greed-mode when the world around them is circling around eternal growth and more money. Thanks again for activating my brain cells, Dirk. What do you all think about the above?

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How to teach managers to manage agile teams? I love to play the Boss-Worker Game in workshops: https://lnkd.in/e6NyxU9v #agile #leadership #management

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summary of the session "new agile ideas" at the #auzh with Urs Enzler and many more. columns are "standards" , current trends, future trends. what do you think?

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It's live and online! A cycle time of 1 day made it possible. What was made possible? Benjamin and I were working on a Kanban Mythbuster Template and it is now officially available on Miro Miroverse. Now together with your teams you can dive into the myths and facts of Kanban and while doing this, it is strictly allowed to have fun, fruitful conversations, new learning and hopefully new ways on how to improve your Kanban practices. And while I consider the cycle time of Miro impressive in uploading the template to their Miroverse, I'd also like to point out our own cycle time in creating the template. Cycle time: 5 days 😉 We hope you will have as much fun with the template as we had creating it. Looking forward to hear your feedback and always appreciate you sharing the learnings that it made possible. #kanban #mythbusters #mirotemplate

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Do your daily stand-ups feel like a waste of time? You‘re not alone. So what can you do? One option would be to stop doing daily stand-ups 🤔, but that doesn‘t fix the real problem. The smarter move: Improve your daily stand-ups by: 👉 understanding what they are REALLY for 👉 actually getting value out of the daily stand-up 👉 have it reduce meetings overall (yes, reduce!) Daily stand-ups, especially the daily scrums in Scrum, are so often misunderstood and done poorly. I wrote how to make it better in the Agile Compass: https://lnkd.in/eSMuPECa #agile #scrum #dailystandup

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2 more days until my next online talk. Lern about how to get new inspiration for your agile journey or private challenges. Looking forward to it and see many of you in the session!

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