Notes

Introduction

  1. 1. Of 101,592 international surveyed software developers, 85.9 percent use agile in their work. “Developer Survey Results, 2018,” Stack Overflow, https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-practices (accessed December 9, 2019).

  2. 2. Sears Holdings, “Sears Holdings Outlines Next Phase of Its Strategic Transformation,” press release, February 10, 2017, https://searsholdings.com/press-releases/pr/2030.

  3. 3. See Weber’s classic work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. One recent edition was published by Routledge Classics (Oxford and New York, 2001).

  4. 4. Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1911). Also available from Project Gutenberg.

  5. 5. See Dominic Barton, Dennis Carey, and Ram Charan, “One Bank’s Agile Team Experiment,” Harvard Business Review, March–April 2018, 59–61.

  6. 6. Anthony Mersino, “Agile Project Success Rates 2X Higher than Traditional Projects (2019),” Vitality Chicago, April 1, 2018, https://vitalitychicago.com/blog/agile-projects-are-more-successful-traditional-projects/.

Chapter 1

  1. 1. Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, “The New New Product Development Game,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 1986, 137–146.

  2. 2. Takeuchi and Nonaka, “The New New Product Development Game,” 137.

  3. 3. James O. Coplien, “Borland Software Craftsmanship: A New Look at Process, Quality and Productivity,” in Proceedings of the 5th Annual Borland International Conference, Orlando, Florida, June 5, 1994, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3a09/1c3f265de024b18ccbf88a6aead223133e39.pdf.

  4. 4. Steven L. Goldman, Roger N. Nagel, and Kenneth Preiss, Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations: Strategies for Enriching the Customer (New York: John Wiley, 1994).

  5. 5. The agile manifesto is available at https://agilemanifesto.org/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

  6. 6. Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, and Hirotaka Takeuchi, “Embracing Agile: How to Master the Process That’s Transforming Management,” Harvard Business Review, May 2016, 40–50.

  7. 7. Rigby, Sutherland, and Takeuchi, “Embracing Agile,” 42.

Chapter 2

  1. 1. Sebastian Wagner, personal interview, 2017.

  2. 2. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up,” originally published in Esquire, February, March, and April, 1936.

  3. 3. Bart Schlatmann and Peter Jacobs, “ING’s Agile Transformation,” interview by Deepak Mahadevan, McKinsey Quarterly, January 2017, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/ings-agile-transformation?

  4. 4. Tammy Sparrow, phone interviews, November 17 and 27, 2017.

  5. 5. See CollabNet VersionOne, 13th Annual State of Agile Report, May 7, 2019, https://www.stateofagile.com/?_ga=2.211020822.2043163775.1579308446-1467289744.1577216170#ufh-i-521251909-13th-annual-state-of-agile-report/473508.

  6. 6. Henrik Kniberg and Anders Ivarsson, “Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds,” October 2012, https://blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SpotifyScaling.pdf.

Chapter 3

  1. 1. Mark Allen, “Mark Allen Interview on Heart Rate Training and Racing,” interview by Floris Gierman, Extramilest, July 2, 2015, https://extramilest.com/blog/mark-allen-interview-on-training-and-racing/.

  2. 2. Allen, “Mark Allen Interview.”

  3. 3. Susan Lacke, “Mark Allen Voted Greatest American Triathlete of All Time,” May 7, 2018, Ironman, https://www.ironman.com/news_article/show/1042292.

  4. 4. Michael Sheetz, “Technology Killing Off Corporate America: Average Life Span of Companies under 20 Years,” CNBC, August 24, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/technology-killing-off-corporations-average-lifespan-of-company-under-20-years.html; https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/.

  5. 5. Max Marmer and Ertan Dogrultan, “Startup Genome Report Extra on Premature Scaling,” March 2012, https://s3.amazonaws.com/startupcompass-public/StartupGenomeReport2_Why_Startups_Fail_v2.pdf.

  6. 6. See, for example, Kate Taylor and Benjamin Goggin, “49 of the Biggest Scandals in Uber’s History,” Business Insider, May 10, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-company-scandals-and-controversies-2017-11; Sam Levin, “Uber’s Scandals, Blunders and PR Disasters: The Full List,” Guardian, June 27, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-travis-kalanick-scandal-pr-disaster-timeline.

  7. 7. Cadie Thompson, “Elon Musk on Missing Model 3 Production Deadlines,” Business Insider, December 9, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-blames-missed-model-3-production-targets-stupidity-2018-12?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Tech_select.

  8. 8. Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahneman, “Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives’ Decisions,” Harvard Business Review, July 2003, 56–63.

  9. 9. Dan Gardner and Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Broadway Books, 2016).

  10. 10. The mission appears on the company’s website: https://www.warbyparker.com/history (accessed January 2, 2020).

  11. 11. “Barnes & Noble Mission Statement and/or Vision Statement,” http://www.makingafortune.biz/list-of-companies-b/barnes-&-noble.htm (accessed December 10, 2019). Barnes & Noble’s website in 2019 seemed to update and simplify this statement: “Barnes & Noble’s mission is to operate the best omni-channel specialty retail business in America, helping both our customers and booksellers reach their aspirations, while being a credit to the communities we serve.” See https://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/about-bn/ (accessed January 2, 2020).

  12. 12. Listing can be found on Wikipedia, s.v. “Ironman World Championship,” last modified October 19, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_World_Championship.

  13. 13. Data from Allen, “Mark Allen Interview.”

Chapter 4

  1. 1. Daniela Kraemer, phone interview, April 1, 2019.

  2. 2. Henk Becker, phone interview, May 2, 2019.

  3. 3. See Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985). Originally published in 1960.

  4. 4. Amar V. Bhidé, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  5. 5. Douglas McGregor, The Professional Manager (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 163.

  6. 6. David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004).

  7. 7. Anne Kathrin Gebhardt, personal and multiple phone interviews beginning April 15, 2019.

Chapter 5

  1. 1. The agile manifesto is available at https://agilemanifesto.org/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

  2. 2. Jeff Bezos, “2016 Letter to Shareholders,” https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders (accessed January 3, 2020).

  3. 3. Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, and Andy Noble, “Agile at Scale,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 2018, 95.

Chapter 6

  1. 1. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprises (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962), 314.

  2. 2. Daniela Kraemer, phone interview, April 1, 2019.

  3. 3. “Help Increase the GDP of the Internet,” Stripe, https://stripe.com/jobs (accessed January 3, 2020).

  4. 4. “A Quick Guide to Stripe’s Culture,” Stripe, https://stripe.com/jobs/culture (accessed January 6, 2020).

  5. 5. Michael Mankins and Eric Garton, Time, Talent, Energy (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017).

  6. 6. Henk Becker, phone interview, May 2, 2019.

  7. 7. Becker, phone interview.

  8. 8. Anne Lis, phone interview, May 2, 2019.

  9. 9. Mankins and Garton, Time, Talent, Energy, 127.

  10. 10. Mankins and Garton, Time, Talent, Energy, 120.

Chapter 7

  1. 1. Les Matheson, interview, Edinburgh, November 17, 2019.

  2. 2. Matheson, interview.

  3. 3. Frans Woelders, interview, Edinburgh, November 5, 2019.

  4. 4. Elizabeth Swan and Tracy O’Rourke, The Problem-Solver’s Toolkit: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Your Lean Six Sigma Journey (Seattle: Amazon Digital Services, 2018).

  5. 5. Hongyi Chen and Ryan Taylor, “Exploring the Impact of Lean Management on Innovation Capability,” in Proceedings of PICMET ’09—Technology Management in the Age of Fundamental Change, Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2009), 816–824.

  6. 6. Steve Blank, “When Startups Scrapped the Business Plan,” interview by Curt Nickisch, Harvard Business Review, August 23, 2017, https://hbr.org/ideacast/2017/08/when-startups-scrapped-the-business-plan.html.

  7. 7. Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Publishing, 2011), Kindle edition, 4.

  8. 8. Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (New York: Wiley, 2017), Kindle edition, 49.

Chapter 8

  1. 1. “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.” See “Chatham House Rule,” https://www.chathamhouse.org/chatham-house-rule (accessed December 30, 2019).

  2. 2. George Anders, “Inside Amazon’s Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes Customers,” Forbes, April 23, 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2012/04/04/inside-amazon/#1058738b6199.

  3. 3. The mission appears on Amazon’s website. “Come Build the Future with Us,” https://www.amazon.jobs/en/working/working-amazon (accessed December 30, 2019).

  4. 4. The principles appear on Amazon’s website. “Leadership Principles,” https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles (accessed December 30, 2019).

  5. 5. Eugene Kim, “Jeff Bezos to Employees: ‘One Day, Amazon Will Fail,’ but Our Job Is to Delay It as Long as Possible,” CNBC, November 15, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/bezos-tells-employees-one-day-amazon-will-fail-and-to-stay-hungry.html.

  6. 6. Jack Welch, “Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence: An Interview with Jack Welch,” interviewed by Noel Tichy and Ram Charan, Harvard Business Review, September–October 1989, 113.

  7. 7. Amar V. Bhidé, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 61.

  8. 8. Fred Wilson, “Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail,” Union Square Ventures (USV), November 30, 2007, https://www.usv.com/writing/2007/11/why-early-stage-venture-investments-fail/.

  9. 9. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), Kindle edition, 207.

  10. 10. Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, “The Power of Small Wins,” Harvard Business Review, May 2011, https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins.