Dr. Dominic Lindner, Autor bei agile Companies

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Finding a topic, focusing and narrowing down theses:: The lighthouse binoculars metaphor

The time has come: The thesis begins and the topic is halfway there and you start reading numerous books and papers. “Wow is all that interested and then I should investigate this aspect and this aspect too, and yes, that too is very exciting”. The end result is that you become less specific and in the end despair of the complexity of the many aspects in the thesis. The thesis is in danger of getting a bad grade or even having to be repeated. That is why the credo of a thesis is: My tip: Find a clear aspect with a question and examine it deeply and comprehensibly. In this article, I will use the metaphor of a landscape and binoculars to show you how to narrow down a topic for a thesis in a meaningful way and stay focused. I also give specific examples of how you can transfer…

Cloud computing 21. March 2021

How reliable is the data availability in the cloud?

For me, cloud computing is defined as the use of IT infrastructure to make IT resources available flexibly via the Internet. In the meantime, more and more companies are using the option of storing data on the Internet using dynamic resources (cloud). According to a study by the Bitkom (Cloud Monitor) 70% of the 500 companies surveyed already use cloud applications today. Most common use case: storage of data and files A common use case is the storage of data on the cloud, whereby data protection and data availability play a special role. In particular, according to the study, despite the concerns, more and more secret and even sensitive data is being stored in the cloud. The types of data are: Non-critical information (81%), Data worth protecting (57%) and Secret information (33%). The survey data show that companies are increasingly storing more data in the cloud and also significantly more…

Digital change 21. March 2021

Bad software leads to shadow IT during Corona

Corona forces us into the home office and the fight begins: VPN, Citrix and three logins! Now comes an error message! What shoud that? Call IT support: No success! Unfortunately, this exaggerated situation is often not an isolated incident! Companies have a poor IT infrastructure. The consequence is that employees cannot work meaningfully and teams acquire private infrastructure. This is called shadow IT and has experienced another boom since Corona! Shadow IT The term shadow IT describes IT systems that are used in the specialist departments or individual employees of a company in addition to the official IT infrastructure and without the knowledge of the IT department. According to a survey by Censuswide on behalf of McAfee 500 IT managers and over 250 employees in companies in Germany were surveyed. Over half of the managers surveyed state that shadow IT exists in the company. Almost 40% of employees also admit…

Work 4.0 21. March 2021

When companies no longer want to work – work avoidance domino effect

I have a few consultations every week which enables practitioners and students to interact with me. I then pack a lot of the contents of the office hours into blog articles. This article is also the origin of the telephone consultation hours. I have received numerous calls from Scrum masters and project leaders as well as change managers since March 2020 – the topic was the change in work since the lockdown caused by COVID-19. Virtual work forces companies to make numerous changes and, due to falling sales, companies are primarily obliged to deliver and to bring products / services to customers quickly. There is no longer any time for long voting channels and long discussions. Companies need to act now. I work and nobody participates! Unfortunately, I hear the sentence from the headline very often. The employees or managers want to implement projects and customer requests quickly. However, it…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

When management becomes a bottleneck and what the alternative is

A bottleneck is a weak point in business management, which is loud Wikipedia “has the highest utilization in the entire process chain in a period of time and thus inhibits the workflow.” Let’s imagine a real bottle from which we pour water into a glass. The outlet speed of the bottle is determined by the narrowest point, i.e. the bottle neck. The narrower the neck of the bottle, the less water gets into our glass. This metaphor has also established itself in business administration. A bottleneck can often be recognized by the queue, which is limited by it, for example the water in the bottle. In business administration, different work processes often flow together in a bottleneck and are checked, for example, or waiting for decisions. If the bottleneck is too slow, the processes jam and there are waiting times. But what does a bottleneck have to do with the…

Digital leadership 21. March 2021

Top managers are exceptional talents – but why are scandals increasing? #wirecard

The current generation of top managers suffers from an image problem. Wirecard CEO Markus Braun was arrested only recently and Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek has been on the run since then (Wirtschaftswoche 2020). The offense is the falsification of balance sheets. Ex-Schalke supervisory board chairman and meat entrepreneur Clemens Tönnies is also currently under suspicion of fraud with delivery notes and work contracts under poor hygiene conditions, which is said to have caused damage of 4 million euros. In this context, ex-Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel is also suspected of having saved Tönnies from a punishment at the time. But these are not isolated cases. With Audi manager Ruppert Stadler, another top manager is facing charges with fraud, indirect false certification and criminal advertising (Handelsblatt 2020). Ex-Bertelsmann manager Thomas Middelhoff is currently in prison for tax evasion and infidelity. After a trial in 2017, he jumped out of the courthouse window…

digitalization 21. March 2021

Current studies on agility

Agility is the ability of the information function of a company to make preparations in order to react very quickly to changing capacity requirements and changed functional requirements, if possible in real time, and to be able to use the possibilities of information technology in such a way that the technical scope of the company is expanded or even redesigned can be ( source ). In the course of my research, I analyzed two studies, which I would like to explain in this article, to show the current state of agility. Study 1: Status Quo Agile Methods The first study was carried out by Komus (2020). With the help of an online survey, over 600 specialists were asked about the current use and importance of agile methods. The survey shows that the vast majority of the respondents’ projects are currently organized in a mixed manner, i.e. contain agile and classic…

Digital change 21. March 2021

How can I create a website for a company with minimal cost?

A website is now more than just information that exists on the Internet and is rarely accessed. Often companies even generate a large part of their sales with such a website. Another example are online shops that sell and sell products to end users exclusively via a website represent what is known as a digital business model . Such a website has become standard for companies and should not be missing in any company. On the one hand, it serves as an information channel for shops and bars, for example, on opening times and how to get there, as well as for companies with their own Products or services as a sales channel . Agencies are often expensive When you ask an agency the price of a website, they often get very high prices and you don’t understand why it is so expensive. An agency will work out requirements for…

digitalization 21. March 2021

Current studies on leadership in digitization

For me, leadership means ensuring performance and motivation in an organization by a person who, through interaction, directs the actions of individuals and groups towards the realization of given goals. In the course of my research, I analyzed two studies that are intended to show the current status of leadership in digitization. The first study examines the skills of managers in connection with digitization and their acquisition. The second study relates to specific changes for managers that are related to digitization. Study 1: Executive Competencies The first study was carried out by the German Society for Personnel Research (DGFP 2016). An online survey was used to collect data on leadership in the context of digitization. Participants were over 300 specialists with management responsibility across all company sizes and industries. The study participants were asked in the study to evaluate competencies in connection with digitization. The most important competencies according to…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

Change management: blueprint for agile and digital maturity and strategy conception incl. Download

You know it when someone suggests changes and these are far from reality? The resistance is often massive and the implementation is often far too complex. Especially in an agile context, changes should be carried out directly from the classic organization to the cool start-up. But this alone is not an agile approach. The magic word is “small steps” to the goal and then gradually evaluate and improve. One way of doing this is through maturity models. A maturity model helps to evaluate and improve processes in the company. For this case, I would like to present an agile maturity model that I like to use. A company can often only assess the degree of maturity based on gut instinct. Dimensions of the agile maturity model First of all, let me introduce you to the first dimension: This is the actual degree of maturity of the organization. This has to…