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My Personal Blog


“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Why do you insist on keep digging holes where you stand?

Thoughts, Ways of Working,
If your goal is to build a road to the future where your vision is aimed, why do you insist on keep digging holes where you stand?

What makes less sense is why you compare the speed with which you are digging those holes instead of measuring how far the road towards your vision you are getting?

Unless your road to success is a hole straight to hell, perhaps it would make sense to lift your gaze towards the horizon instead of staring down at your feel at the bottom of the hole you are so frantically digging?

Vision requires goals. Goals require planning and planning require focused execution. Ad-hoc ways of working where you make things up as you go along without focus, goals or vision is just you digging a hole where you stand.

Measuring the speed of which you dig your hole or patting yourself on the back for thinking less and doing more is a rather interesting choice if the goal is to move forward...
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

Is your team an engineering team, or a mining team?

Thoughts, Ways of Working,
Your team is either an Engineering team building towards a vision, or a mining team digging up value as they find it. You can't do both.

Many teams are confused about of these two and as a result they get the wrong result.

If you are working with continuous deliveries then your goal is to always move towards your visions and goals.

If you are working in a project, or in a R&D setting with ideation and exploration, then you are working towards finding as much value as you can in a set amount of time.

If you are working in a continuous delivery, and you are just digging where you stand, then you are not working towards your goals and visions, but you are trying to dig up as much value as you can in the time available.

This is frustrating because instead of moving forward, you are going downward. So make sure you know if your aim is forward or downward and act accordingly.


What direction is your team working towards?

If you are struggling to deliver today, then this could be why.
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

When people talk about technical debt I always wonder if the debt is intentional

Thoughts, Ways of Working,
When people talk about technical debt I always wonder if the debt is intentional or just the result of not thinking things through properly.

In my experience systems that are in bad shape tend to be so for a handful of reasons.

- Little to no structure - Instead of having a strategy on how to build systems, people make things up as they go. With many people doing this, the end result is never good.

- Little to no deep thinking - Instead of thinking things through properly people do a quick brainstorming on a whiteboard and then implement. Missing important aspects of the implementation due to not doing any deep thinking. IN this case speed kills.

- Unclear or obfuscated requirements - When the need is never really defined and/or constantly shift then you can only do so much thinking before everything becomes reactive and quality drops like a stone.

- No time to do things right - Stressful time limits, usually from bad requirements or lack of good estimations, reduce the time available to actually think things through. This can also be an organization issue if the culture is to just run and fix whatever you can here and now to make things look good instead of actually doing good.

- Lack of care - People that are treated poorly stop caring. It is as easy as that. When people stop caring, which usually comes from disrespect or abuse in the workplace, then there is little you can do to prevent damage from happening to the service or product.

The fix is easy: Treat people with respect and make sure there is time and expectations to think things through before you build things.

Ad-hoc running is madness, and it does nothing to help making the organization successful.
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

Is it fair to blame Agile for the stress related health issues affecting management?

Agile, Stress, Thoughts,
Is it fair to blame Agile for the stress related health issues affecting management? Are we sacrificing management for development teams to self-manage and if so is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It is no secret that management has become increasingly more difficult in the wake of the Agile movement. At least in the part of the Agile movement where teams are self-isolating and making up their own way of working with no alignment with the rest of the organization.

I have seen managers pass out in meetings and several have broken down to the point where they needed medical assistance. This is not uncommon and of all positions in a company I feel that middle management is by far the most stressful at the moment.

I believe this is due to a bad culture of always trying to be as fast as possible, poor communication between management and the teams and of course misaligned work processes that forces management to do far more work than they should have to.

While it is easy to blame Agile frameworks like Scrum for this, but is that really fair? It is not in Scrum that the teams should isolate themselves from management, at least not directly, but it seems that this is something that teams do on their own.

The gap between teams and management is growing and the question is if it is now worse than during the days of silo work in what we refer to as Waterfall, or when we will pass that point.

Manager across the globe are suffering, and I don't see anyone talking about this, or the cause of why they do. I think we should talk about it and the increasingly selfish behavior that is on the raise with internal tribalism feeding conflict between groups in the organizations instead of collaboration...
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

Your internal production systems are not toys.

Legal, Security, Thoughts, Ways of Working,
Your internal production systems are not toys. Using them as such and claiming it is so you can be "creative" is a clear indicator you and your organization are immature as an IT organization.

Internal production systems are critical for your daily operation, otherwise you would not use them. Treating those systems as toys by not having proper governance for access, having little to no governance over integrations and allowing configurations without any strategy or governance is a disaster waiting to happen.

While innovation is important, it should not come at the expense of security and legal compliance. With regulations like GDPR you must have full control over your data and if you want any form of security you must control access and integrations.

In mature organizations you solve this by having separate systems where people can play around and be creative, and then they control the change process before any value found during these play sessions are implemented in production systems.

Immature organizations not only have a problem with security and legal compliance, the people that use these tools as toys also tend to behave like children when their toys are taken away from them.

This makes transitioning from an immature organization to a mature one an unpleasant event, and you need to pick your "parenting" style when doing it depending on how much conflict your organization can manage...

By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

Take back control of common sense

Thoughts, Ways of Working,
DevOps should not need to be implemented, it should be the norm. An agile mindset should just be common sense. What you need to focus on is understanding and respect in 2025 so you can build a holistic governance organization that can capture all the amazing ideas on how to work better holistically together.

Put the ready-made frameworks and methodologies you have floating around in all their bastardized forms aside and start building your own methodologies today.

No buzzwords.

No Made up roles or rituals.

Just take what works, name it after what it does and learn more about your co-workers need across your organization.

Ge those egos in check and start looking out for everyone and not just yourselves. Build that trust that you can spend time and energy looking out for others because you know they will do the same for you.

Take back control of common sense and apply it to your ways of working and start looking at your problems and opportunities from a holistic perspective!
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

Projects are not that difficult

Thoughts, Ways of Working,
If you are running a project, then you use Project Management as the method. If you run multiple projects, then you run Program Management as a method. If you run continuous deliveries for a product or service, then you use product/service management as a methodology.

If you write code in either of those, then you use whatever method you want that fit whatever framework you have selected. Your work is the same, and it is only the level of detailed requirement and time restrictions that are different.

If you estimate correctly, then the management format should be irrelevant for you. If you can't estimate or work with requirements, then projects will feel like hell on earth and most likely fail.

This is not rocket science and if you want to be really good at your work, make sure you become an expert in working in project format because continuous deliveries will automatically be easy at the same time.

Don't blame projects for your lack of competence in estimation and working with requirement in a fixed delivery setting. Learn it, or continue to let everyone involved to suffer.

It really is that easy.
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

If you are focusing on Customer First, then you are focusing on the wrong thing

Thoughts, Ways of Working,
If you are running a project, then you use Project Management as the method. If you run multiple projects, then you run Program Management as a method. If you run continuous deliveries for a product or service, then you use product/service management as a methodology.

If you write code in either of those, then you use whatever method you want that fit whatever framework you have selected. Your work is the same, and it is only the level of detailed requirement and time restrictions that are different.

If you estimate correctly, then the management format should be irrelevant for you. If you can't estimate or work with requirements, then projects will feel like hell on earth and most likely fail.

This is not rocket science and if you want to be really good at your work, make sure you become an expert in working in project format because continuous deliveries will automatically be easy at the same time.

Don't blame projects for your lack of competence in estimation and working with requirement in a fixed delivery setting. Learn it, or continue to let everyone involved to suffer.

It really is that easy.
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

In a toxic workplace honesty is punished and silence is rewarded

Thoughts, Work,
In a toxic workplace honesty is punished and silence is rewarded. In a toxic workplace your reaction to other's disrespect makes you the problem. If you speak up, then you are considered problematic, and you are branded as disloyal.

If you are feeling that you must stay silent to avoid being branded as problematic or disloyal, that is a toxic workplace. If you feel that you must reduce yourself so you do not threaten others ego under the guise of the company mantra that you should be "easy to work with", then you are in a toxic workplace.

If you are bullied to change your language to avoid hurting someone's feelings, even when the words you use are not intended to hurt, then you are being censored and disrespected, and you are in a toxic workplace.

If other people are valued more than you based on their gender, color of their skin, culture or any other generic trait, then you are in a toxic workplace. Your value comes from within and if that is not the fact in your workplace, then it is a toxic workplace.

Bad leadership fear honesty and toxic workplaces thrive in silence. Fear is not commitment or loyalty and disrespect disguised as kindness is not company culture.

It is abuse.

If you have the option to find another workplace, do it as quickly as you can. If leaving is not an option, then find help outside the organization and do whatever you need to survive during working hours.

Be safe and never accept that the price for loyalty, or respect, is the loss of your voice.

You deserve better than that.

By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Thoughts ·

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