Saturday 10 March 2012

"DSDM Atern - overshadowed by SCRUM? How can it best raise its profile?


Kevin Downes on the linkedin DSDM Group started a discussion-
"DSDM Atern - overshadowed by SCRUM? How can it best raise its profile?

He started this with the comment ”I'm rather beginning to think that DSDM Atern has lost the race to adoption and recognition compared with Scrum et al. Certainly in the UK - recruiter agencies hardly ever seem to have heard of it and as far as I can tell you very rarely see it mentioned in job adverts (yet the terms "Agile" or "Scrum" will pop in 90% of them)."


My thoughts in this are: 


DSDM need to change business models and move to creative commons or "open source" approach; its copyrighting and restrictive practices on consulting and training as a way of generating income for the group are the core of its demise. Revenue models of the nineties which worked well in the past are not effective in the world we live in today. 


I'll give you an example: Alex Osterwalder author of Business Model Generation offers all of his IP on a creative commons basis, you would think originally this is crazy as everyone uses it for free, however the reverse is true because everyone uses, it trains it and talks about it. He makes his money from the sale of his books and extensive conference work and is highly successful. Even the book was given away free as a PDF covering the first half but so many people liked it they bought the actual one after their first look. The "freemium" model has resulted in evangelisation of this approach. 


As much as this may grate with the originators of DSDM; if they step back and change more money will be made by opening up than they realise I just hope it is not to late as I always loved DSDM.

DSDM Atern doesn't exactly roll of the tongue as an exciting and compelling brand - when one mentions DSDM "what's that they say" you reply " Dynamic Systems Development Method" - eyes glaze over nervous cough and "That's some systems I.T. methodology thing then - what was your journey like in from Winchester today?" conversation on DSDM ends.....

Whilst underneath DSDM is fantastic for all sorts of non I.T. development -Training development process improvement etc. let alone software ; I know that as most of us  do as well, but we have reached a point where I am concerned about its future.


In ecology species reach a population beneath which extinction is guaranteed, I do hope we haven't reached that point with DSDM.



Monday 5 March 2012

Is Recession a Mass Extinction?

Mass extinctions in geological time have occurred many times, the best known is at the end of the Cretaceous when it is believed the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico was hit by rather a large asteroid causing catastrophic climate change through a dust created perpetual winter; death of the vegetation across the globe and the dependant ecosystem, including dinosaurs amongst other things. This allowed a new spurt in evolutionary change allowing the mammals to develop and dominate the planet. Did you know that roast chicken last Sunday was probably the evolutionary descendant of a dinosaur!

In business terms is the current recession a mass extinction and if so what evolutionary change will it bring for the positive. Things may well be dire at present but many strategists say that a good clear out is often good for innovation and creativity.

Will there be a re balancing of the UK economy now the results of off-shoring and manufacturing decline have suddenly hit us so there is no one left to buy the products at home that were off-shored. I always thought that off-shoring missed the macro economic point that if you sack the call centre classes in the UK then there won't be as many people able to afford the products in the UK that you service in India and the like! It might have been cheap and in mode but was it right for the country?

Will there be a new breed of SME businesses freed of the shackles of high  I.T. infrastructure investment enabled through new SAAS and cloud provisions.

Marketing has already been revolutionised by the web opening up a world that was once restricted to a select set of wealthy companies now open to anyone with a bit of creativity and a laptop; will this now extend to operations and service provision?

Oh, and if you here someone say "he is a dinosaur" tell them that the dinosaurs were around substantially longer than we humans have been so far; in fact a part from the unfortunate asteroid at the end, they were very successful for 60-80  millions years or so; we have only been around 200,000 years so far!