Portfolio and Strategy
A Product Portfolio does not happen. O.K. sometimes it does, but in fact in order to reach a certain goal, your goal, You need to have a stringent development strategy and this development strategy needs to be managed, i.e. be aligned with an overall strategy, needs to recognize time horizons, needs to realize that capacity […]
From Situation to Strategy
How to I start strategic work when I have never followed a stringent path in terms of strategy? Document your portfolio as it is today. You can find a center of gravity in there? This is your identity. Your portfolio defines your identity. If not, give yourself an identity. How do you want to be […]
Identity
Have a clear vision – Start with Why Start with Why is Simon Sinek’s mission to help others do work, which inspires them, and uses real-world examples of great leaders to show you how they communicate and how you can adapt their mindset to inspire others yourself. 3 lessons you should take away from Start […]
Wardley Mapping
Wardley mapping is a visual method for exploring, understanding, and communicating strategy under circumstances of constant change. What is your competitive environment? Where should you focus? (Why here over there?) What should you own and build in-house? What should you buy off-the-shelf or outsource? Which methodologies should you use? Where are your competitors relative to you? […]
Yesterday’s Weather
An extreme programming technique. If you do not know anything to make a prediction, use your own historic data to predict what will happen. You are allowed to learn and to adapt. Take your own experience and modify settings to tweak the outcome. This is a very simple PDCA cycle. It is a little bit […]
Three Horizon Model
The three horizon model is attributed to Mehrdad Baghai, Stephen Coley, and David White, “The Alchemy of Growth”, New York: Perseus Publishing, 1999. The idea that we are going to employ here is simply to separate operations from tactics from strategy. Operations is referring to the present and the immediate future. Strategy is determining the […]
Portfolio Management Squared
Portfolio Management is typically considered with respect to products. This restriction however ignores a very strong interdependency. Typically, complex products are systems, comprised of sub-systems. The people in our organizations that generate these systems are a system themselves, just like the organization that is a system in its own. The is a very close symbiosis […]
Portfolio Management
The portfolio management is an essential feature for strategic thinking. We need to know where we want to be in three to five years from now. Even in uncertain times, were tomorrow is not certain (it actually never is …), we need to know where we want to be in in future. A longer horizon […]
PDCA
Plan-Do-Check-Adjust(Act) Cycle. Make a plan, execute as planned, check the result and decide for the next step. Darn simple – in principle. Question is why so few people actually use the cycle. don not mistake the P-D-C-A Cycle as “trial and error”. Trial and error works without the input of intelligence. When you do not […]
Investment Horizons
Understand that funds are limited. This is not rocket science. You can spend money only once. The main consequences for our portfolio considerations are therefore to remember what we already committed to do. This the part of “run the business”. We made commitments and we better keep them, otherwise we lose trust of our customers. […]