Excerpts from Innovator's Dilemma

Sears Roebuck

• Sears Roebuck -- retailer in the US and rest of the world
• 1880s thru early 1990s
• Started off as Catalog of Watches and Jewelry
• IPO in 1906. By 19060s it was the largest retailer in the world.
• Started off selling single product category
• The retail sector was overpriced. Sears started selling anything and everything. You could order from comfort of your home (like we do from Amazon).
• Pioneered several innovations critical to retailing -- supply chain management, store brands, catalog retailing, and credit card sales.
• As of 2016 its main competitors were: Walmart, Target, Kohl's, J.C. Penny, Macy's, Home Depot, Lowe's, Best Buy, and Amazon.
• 1984 together with IBM created Prodigy - a pre-Web online web portal. Built on a private network; was distinct from Internet.
• Simplified structure in 1992; discontinued catalog in 1993, sold Prodigy in 1996; 1999 back to retailing roots.
• Filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy on 15th Oct 2018.
• 46 Unprofitable stores were to be closed by Nov 2018.
• It will begin closing additional 142 stores end of year
• It missed the advent of discount retailing / mass merchandiser (e.g. Aldi, Lidl, BigW, KMart, Target, Costco, Daiso, Matalan (Bradley stoke), Home Bargains (Bradley stoke),  -- offer wide assortments of goods with focus on price rather than on service) and home centers (Large hardware store selling tools, building materials, and other household items )
• Sears allowed arrogance to blind itself to the changes taking place in American marketplace
• Couldn't compete with Catalog Stores ( e.g. Argos UK)

Other Leadership failures

• IBM dominated the Mainframe market but missed by many years the emergence of mini computers.
• Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
• Xerox long dominated the Plan-paper Photocopiers business and yet missed the huge growth and profit opportunity for small talbletop photocopiers
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In both DEC and Sears' case, the decisions that led to their decline were made at the time they were widely regarded as being astutely managed firms; and being among the best companies in the world.

Resume Driven Development - RDD

RDD is the practice of the developers sliding their own features to try out the latest trend and hip technology. 

Situational Leadership...

• Agile project management is more about leading a team than managing a team (Cohn).
• Understand what the team needs in terms of leadership.
• Servant Leadership is more about Leadership than being the doormat of your team.
• Agile leadership is situational (depending on the set of circumstances).
• Agile works because the team is empowered - a lot of responsibility is delegated to the team (Mackenzie).
• Situational leadership is recognizing that there is no right way of leading a team, but effectively bounce between the following styles:
• Directing: Tell the team what to do
• Coaching: Sell an idea so the team will do
• Supporting: Work along with team to do
• Delegating: Delegate to team to do

Map the above with Tuckman's phases of team development - Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. You may start with a Directing approach as the team forms, and gradually as the team matures, coach, support and finally delegate.

Agile works the best when the team is in the "Delegating" Mode.

Agile Transformation Steps

It is very important to choose the right candidate projects for Agile Transformation. Too often you will lose credibility of the right projects are not picked up. There will be stiff resistance from teams if they don't see the value of transformation soon enough.

Co existence of old ways of working is another key factor. Ensure the new ways of working are comprehensively implemented. Most often allowing old framework to co-exist will undermine the efforts of agile ways / new ways of working. This may include the traditional documentation, phase reviews and documentation sign offs.

Key Agile Topics

Scrum Master
============

1.The purpose of top level scrum ceremonies
2.The value of observed practices during ceremonies
3.Resolve impediments external to the team
4.Write deliverable, vertically-sliced stories
5.“Turn up the good” through frequent retrospectives
6.Make work visible
7.Promote a psychologically-safe team environment
8.Model servant leadership behaviors

Product Ownership
==================

1.Product Manager / Analyst Role Evolution
2.Product Ownership
3.Customer Experience
4. NFR Overview
5. NFR Considerations
6.The Backlog
7.Value / Return on Investment
8.Technical Debt
9.Market Analysis
10.Product Design
11.Product Marketing Basics
12.Business Value Domain
13.Embedded End User Feedback

Agile Leadership
================

1. Team composition
2. Product ownership
3. Portfolio management / work intake
4. Customer experience
5. IaaS
6. Legacy system evolution
7. NFR and considerations
8. Talent management
9. Vendor management
10. Financial management
11.Dependency Elimination