Agile Performance Improvement

This book addresses a pervasive and potentially devastating work problem: failure to deliver value. As an advisor or consultant, do you find yourself recast by your client as an order taker? As a project manager, do you struggle to deliver high-quality output in a timely manner? As a member of a development team, do you find yourself being industrious in the pursuit of delivering things that nobody cares about? As a product owner, do you seek better ways to articulate the impact of your team’s output?


for answers i turn to the colorful histories, foundational principles, and practices from two disciplines: Agile and human performance technology. The hybrid is agile performance improvement, which embraces a collaborative approach to the pursuit of business results that the two professions share.


You don’t have to be a corporate training person or a software engineer to apply the lessons of agile performance improvement. Any individual or team producing creative output can apply it. i draw from a variety of pursuits to illustrate the method—from running a restaurant to running a car rental agency, from home improvement to skateboarding and beyond.


As well as being a foundational exposition of agile performance improvement, this book is a call to action for like-minded people to band together to change the way we work.


there is some serious business in here, but i consciously keep the tone lighthearted. After all, learning to work together toward shared success is some of the most fun you can have.