TechInnov Inc., is a 32 year old corporation, who pioneered many revolutionary technological innovations, throughout their corporate existence. The founder CEO ran the company for 16 years until a sudden illness took him away from the company and he was replaced by a co-founder, CTO, for the next 10 years. Six years ago, the board recruited an industry veteran to lead the company, who changed the philosophy of the company, which saw many joint ventures and diversification. While the company saw tremendous growth and the board is happy with the CEO, his failing health is causing concern and the nightmares of the first CEO passing away suddenly and the resultant transition, worries them. If you are one of the active and leading board member, what would be your approach to the situation?
Suggested Solution
As an active board member, I would constitute an operational management committee comprising business leaders from each business. I would include the current CEO in the committee in an advisory capacity and I will also participate as an observer. Encourage sharing best practices and working out solutions to operational issues, while creating a strategic vision by the combined team. Identify couple of leaders, who demonstrate potential to lead and gaining acceptance amongst the committee members and be ready to replace the CEO, if a need were to arise.
2 Responses
Velocity of each individual iteration will be a different figure. There are many ways velocity gets impacted. Apart from planned absence (planned leave, training etc.) and holidays, there could be unplanned absences caused by illness, personal emergency etc. which impact velocity. User stories that do not get completed in an iteration get moved to next iteration. This brings down the velocity of the iteration where the story was started and bumps up the velocity of the iteration where it got completed. This being the situation, good practice is to take an average of last five or six iterations as the velocity of the team. Team stability is another factor that impacts velocity. Teams that have higher churn will see higher volatility in velocity. Other factors such as change in technology, adoption of new tools, increase in automation, will also impact velocity either positively or negatively! However, if team is stable and has reached “performing stage” steady rise in average velocity will be seen over a period of time till any of the factors mentioned above comes into play and impacts it.
Thanks Milind, fully agree with your comment.
Finally, irrespective of the increasing trend in velocity, there is improvement for sure. This cannot be missed, if observed. One of the intent of my blog is to encourage this observation, by taking a mildly provocative stand.