A good leader is a magic wand. Direct them to a problem, and they make it go away. Little guidance is needed, and there’s no complaining either. This type of leader is already at your side when you draw your sword to do battle. They support you, empower you, and believe in your mission.
Who are your magic wands? For whom do you perform magic?
Once a month. Once a month, with no intention to go more frequently? Just give up, pack it in and go home.
We live in a world where it’s not just “best practice”, but it’s actually easy to deploy code multiple times per day. This garners you opportunities to learn from your customers, multiple times per day.
A few pointers to get you going in the right direction: Unit Tests, GitHub Flow, Test Automation, CI/CD, Microservices, Feature Flags, New Relic, Chat Ops.
The thinking has to flip. You are not a taxi fleet. You are not a laundry service. You are not a bank. You are a technology company, that delivers taxis, clean laundry, and banking services.
The sooner you realize that need to structure yourself as a technology company, the better the chance that you will evolve fast enough. Evolve fast enough, and you just might avoid becoming the next Blockbuster.
It’s been a blast presenting story mapping at Agile 2015. Here’s the prez that I delivered – happy to address questions via twitter or email.