What does it mean to maintain a stable system, and, moreover, why does this actually matter? The short answer is that stable systems translate into predictable systems. Predictable systems enable you to give a confident answer to the quite common question “When will this be done?”. They enable the possibility to create accurate delivery forecasts based on your past performance, thus producing highly reliable service level agreements. And, furthermore, this can be achieved with less effort and time than what…

One of the most efficient ways to achieve a robust and highly productive business operation is to pay close attention to the bottlenecks in your system and manage them effectively. In his book ‘Theory of Constraints’, Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt defines a bottleneck as “anything that limits a system from achieving higher performance versus its goal”. The key to manage these highly undesired success inhibitors is to fully recognize but not fight the symptoms. Instead, managers need to adhere to a…

The modern workforce is rapidly swapping the security of an office-based, nine-to-five job with the flexibility of freelancing. In fact, figures from Forbes suggest 59% of U.S. companies now use a flexible workforce to some degree, with new tactics to attract and hire the best talent emerging by the day.  In this transformed hiring landscape, it’s important to remember that working from home is vastly different from working in an office cubicle, and recruiters ought to look for specific traits…

More than 50 years ago, Peter Drucker, a management consultant and author, described as the founder of modern management, predicted we would shift to a knowledge society. He said information would change the way people work – that knowledge will become the most important economic resource. Instead of generating value through physical labor with their muscles, people will do it with their minds. Drucker described these people as “knowledge workers”.  So, who is a knowledge worker? Simply described, a knowledge…

Building a robust, reliable system that enables a smooth, predictable delivery of work requires a great deal of effort.  However, even with an efficient Kanban pull system in place, one where the team pulls the work themselves, WIP limits are set up and team members are autonomous, there will be tasks that inevitably get stuck in the workflow. Blockers come in all shapes and sizes. From dependencies between tasks, teams, and third parties, to a lack of information or unclear…

You asked and we’ve delivered; Jira teams can now use Nave to optimize their software development processes. If you use Jira Server to manage your process, and your instance is not exposed publicly, or you just prefer to control the data that you upload to the cloud for security reasons, please follow our guidelines on how to load your data using JSON or CSV file. Here is our three-step guide to configure Nave with Jira quickly and easily. Step 1:…

From ideation to delivery, work flows through the value stream until it reaches the end customer. The Kanban Method is designed to optimize the flow of work as it moves through the value stream. It’s a system that works upon the speed and efficiency of your delivery by minimizing waste and team overburden, outside of the value stream. To manage this approach, two Kanban roles have emerged – Service Request Manager (SRM) and Service Delivery Manager (SDM). Both SRM and…