Dr. Dominic Lindner, Autor bei agile Companies

Cloud computing 21. March 2021

Basics of cloud technologies

The beginnings of cloud technologies go back almost 20 years. Even after the turn of the millennium, large companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Yahoo and Co were experimenting with the flexible use of computers over the Internet. At the moment, the focus was primarily on the increasing user base at peak times such as Christmas. Companies such as the online retailer Amazon are striving to serve their customers faster and more efficiently through bundled computers via the Internet. From these beginnings, today’s cloud technologies finally developed. But what exactly do they actually describe? What service and delivery models for cloud technologies are there now? And what conclusions can be drawn from the rapid development? What does the term mean? The use of special IT infrastructure is described with the term “cloud”, in English “cloud”. It is primarily a matter of making IT resources available dynamically via the Internet in…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

How can you implement the Spotify model in traditional companies?

Companies have always been in constant change. Be it in terms of technology or organization. Now that agile methods have found their way into companies, the credo is now to synchronize various agile and classic methods and to break up classic hierarchies in order to make your own organization faster and more flexible. One approach to this can be the Spotify model, which has been gaining more and more importance since 2014. But German companies are characterized by special processes and a long tradition – in contrast to Spotify, which started out on the greenfield. So is it possible to just copy the Spotify model? Certainly not! In this article, I would like to show my experience in introducing and adapting the Spotify model for a fictional German company and underpin it with my experience of the last 2 years from my professional experience with the Spotify model. For general…

Cloud computing 21. March 2021

Cloud: IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service

At IaaS , short for Infrastracture as a Service , is a service model of cloud technologies. The user can manage the environment himself, apart from the physical infrastructure. IaaS also offers the advantage that it is comparatively inexpensive by sharing resources with other users. In addition, this service model is structured in such a way that several servers are provided in a network in a data center, which together form a cloud. In other words, the hardware is virtualized and thus enables companies to keep their financial expenses in the cloud area low. Packages from IaaS The resources linked to this system are usually made available in a kind of smaller package. These in turn contain individual components such as: Virtual CPUs: Virtual CPUs differ from real CPUs in that no dedicated CPUs are provided for a customer, but the calculations are carried out on currently “free” cores.Storage: Typically…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

What does virtual work have in common with eating cake?

For many companies, virtual work and setting up virtual teams have become an integral part of the organizational structure. Nevertheless, many digital leaders repeatedly deal with the problem that the greater the size and spread of the teams, the more complex collaboration becomes. It can quickly happen that the actual structure and organization becomes confusing and chaotic. There is an efficient way of splitting up a large amount of tasks o so that large teams can effectively organize virtual work. Is virtual work really as easy to set up as a cake buffet? Even if the headline of this article may sound ridiculous at first. You can actually compare virtual work to eating cake. How is that supposed to work? Very easily! Take a look at the following picture: Imagine they are selling cakes at a buffet. As a salesperson, you represent yourself as a team leader. Your buyers, who…

Work 4.0 21. March 2021

How can you control remote and home office work?

Home office and distributed teams are on everyone’s lips and for many it is a dream to be able to work from anywhere and at any time. What sounds like a dream for employees is pure horror for many executives, because the question arises: Will someone still work what? Basically, my experience is that employees who hardly work in the office do hardly anything at home. In contrast, hard-working employees are just as hard-working at home. A current study, which examines almost 30,000 employees has shown that employees in the home office work an average of 4 hours more overtime per week than employees in the office. So the fear that employees will do nothing only seems to exist in the heads of managers? Control task completion in the home office Even with great self-organization and trust, there should be a possibility of control. To do this, you first need…

Cloud computing 21. March 2021

Cloud computing – the current status in companies

As a result of widespread digitization, the demands on computing resources have also risen sharply. As a result, cloud computing is becoming more and more important. Due to the large amount of data and information and the urge for faster and more flexible solutions, the demands have also increased. More memory, better servers and a higher degree of software, network components and databases are now required. The main advantage is that the user only pays for the cloud service actually used. This gives companies the opportunity to reduce their operating costs. At the same time, you can implement needs-based scaling in an effective infrastructure. But how many companies have already recognized these opportunities? And what is the current usage rate? Or to put it another way: What is the status quo of cloud computing in companies? How current statistics of the “Cloud Monitor 2019” from Bitkom show, almost three quarters…

Digital change 21. March 2021

Importance of a digital strategy

With the advent of digitization, there are many new requirements for companies. One of them is the development of a suitable digital strategy. But what does it mean? How important is the focus on such a digital strategy really? And above all: what about companies that place little value on it? What is a digital strategy? However, before I go deeper into the topic and importance of a digital strategy for the individual areas of a company in this article, I would like to first discuss the definition of the term. Many often only associate the term “digital strategy” with pure goals in the field of online marketing. This only describes a small part of this measure. Because the term is more about the development of a company towards a holistic use of digital processes. In other words: the digital strategy describes the entire transformation of a company towards digitization.…

Medium-sized companies 4.0 21. March 2021

From silo thinking to open structures with more cooperation – how breaking #project boundaries can serve as a problem solver for SMEs! –

Since At the beginning of my blog I deal with the advantages and opportunities that for SMEs by introducing agility and implementing related agile methods. As part of the Blog parade from projektmagazin.de I want to be specific in this post Dealing with the opportunities available to small and medium-sized companies Companies by optimizing physical and virtual collaboration in Can open up with regard to internal project management. In Germany the middle class is strongly represented. More than 99 percent of all companies are among the SMEs in this country and many of them can be attributed to technological Level in addition to pioneers and best practice examples. But how can it be that exactly these companies seem to be changing after all Ordinary methods, such as the introduction of holistic strategies, fail? How can it be that the role models from medium-sized businesses are still like this rigid boundaries…

Work 4.0 21. March 2021

Does every job really have to be meaningful for the employee?

Recently (2019) Xing asked over 17,000 of its members about salaries and one of the primary results is that every tenth XING user would change jobs for more meaningful work. According to the study, Generation Y in particular places more value on meaning in their job than on the “pure paycheck at the end of the month”. This is just one of many surveys that consider the purpose of work to be very important. Under a similar aspect, in 2019 I conducted workshops on the search for meaning and team vision with 9 teams and I noticed that not everyone needs meaning and that it is often difficult to find, especially in routine tasks. But the topic of meaning is currently such a big topic in the minds of many managers that a veritable search for meaning is kicked off in some companies. Reading tip: Team workshop to search for…

Digital change 21. March 2021

How can you try out digitization inexpensively?

Even if the German economy consists largely of small and medium-sized companies, there are still many deficits compared to large corporations with regard to digitization. Although most SMEs now recognize the importance of a digitized company as an essential and absolutely necessary step, this area is not infrequently characterized by strong doubts. Why does digitization often fail in SMEs? It often fails due to the financial aspect in particular, where many small and medium-sized corporations consider digitizing internal processes to be too time-consuming and above all cost-intensive. This often results in situations like the one in the following graphic. In particular, the fact that digitization is not a sure-fire success causes many SMEs to shy away at first. The management levels of small and medium-sized companies are often afraid of the seemingly long-term and cost-technically difficult to calculate effort of digitization. As a result, many SMEs see themselves lagging behind…