Michael Küsters
Michael is an Enterprise Transformation Coach helping companies of all sizes achieve new levels of performance with their software development organizations. He worked as a developer, tester, analyst, team lead, architect, and project manager before using first Six Sigma and Kanban, then Scrum, then other agile frameworks for helping organizations discover better ways of working. He wrote multiple books on his experience and led lectures at the Technische Universität Dortmund on how to run successful IT projects.
Check his blog and YouTube channel.
Title of presentation: Building a Successful Company with the TOP Structure.
Every day, thousands of companies worldwide ask the question, “How should we structure our software development in order to maximize our probability of success, while minimizing overhead, time to market, cost, and defects?” Due to its popularity, the Scrum framework is often the first choice for organizing teams. Unfortunately, Scrum requires massive adjustments to the way an organization works – and its scope is limited to single teams. As soon as a development organization extends beyond one team, organizations typically look for “scaling frameworks” – all of which have their own challenges in adoption.
The TOP structure condenses the essentials that successful organizations share and highlights the challenges where unsuccessful organizations waste opportunities, time, money, and energy – and often also staff motivation. The TOP Structure – Technology, Organization, Product – is a scale-free approach to successfully structure effective software development organizations of any size, and without any regard to adherence to any specific “agile framework,” although it can be utilized in conjunction with them. It can therefore be utilized by all organizations without running a major transformation program.
Since the TOP structure is based on First Principle Patterns, it can be utilized immediately to highlight needs for action and builds on Continuous Improvement in order to shape a more effective development unit. In his talk, Michael Küsters, the author of the TOP Structure provides a brief overview of the model and demonstrates:
- The TOP domains
- Responsibility distribution in a TOP structure
- How the TOP structure creates a sustainable balance
- Some key principles and patterns that already apply in your company - although you've never seen them.
Present Connection Track
Building a Successful Company with the TOP Structure
Every day, thousands of companies worldwide ask the question, “How should we structure our software development in order to maximize our probability of success, while minimizing overhead, time to market, cost, and defects?” Due to its popularity, the Scrum framework is often the first choice for organizing teams. Unfortunately, Scrum requires massive adjustments to the way an organization works – and its scope is limited to single teams. As soon as a development organization extends beyond one team, organizations typically look for “scaling frameworks” – all of which have their own challenges in adoption.
The TOP structure condenses the essentials that successful organizations share and highlights the challenges where unsuccessful organizations waste opportunities, time, money, and energy – and often also staff motivation. The TOP Structure – Technology, Organization, Product – is a scale-free approach to successfully structure effective software development organizations of any size, and without any regard to adherence to any specific “agile framework,” although it can be utilized in conjunction with them. It can therefore be utilized by all organizations without running a major transformation program.
Since the TOP structure is based on First Principle Patterns, it can be utilized immediately to highlight needs for action and builds on Continuous Improvement in order to shape a more effective development unit. In his talk, Michael Küsters, the author of the TOP Structure provides a brief overview of the model and demonstrates:
- The TOP domains
- Responsibility distribution in a TOP structure
- How the TOP structure creates a sustainable balance
- Some key principles and patterns that already apply in your company - although you've never seen them.