Category Archives: IT strategy

STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – The Guardian

24 Tue Feb 2026

Posted by in agile, agile@scale, All Data, Architecture, Assets, awareness, behaviour, business strategy, Creativity, Dogma, IT strategy, Strategy, structured intellectual capital, Value

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Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Wednesday 25th February 2026.

Seven years on, the verdict is in, and it’s not flattering. Back in 2019, in a Brussels-fuelled rant channelling the incomparable Bob Hoffman, I declared Agile at Scale the next frontier of IT bullshit: immature, ill-conceived, supercilious, and emphatically not agile. It killed communication with jargon, turned criticism into heresy, and mangled history by ignoring what actually worked. I called it a cultish Frankenstein of Scientology zeal, Vatican pomp, and authoritarian quirks – all wrapped in vainglorious slide decks.

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CEO BRIEFING: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – Remastered and Revisited – 2026/01/27

07 Sat Feb 2026

Posted by in agile, agile@scale, All Data, Architecture, Assets, awareness, behaviour, business strategy, Creativity, Dogma, IT strategy, Strategy, structured intellectual capital, Value

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Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Bruxelles, 28th May 2019

To begin at the beginning

To paraphrase the great Bob Hoffman. Just when you feared that Agile evangelists might produce even more nonsense, they surprise you. What do they do? Exceed expectations.

And how did they do that? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Agile at Scale. It comes with all the miscellaneous, spiced-up, and vainglorious crap-on-the-side that accompanies it.

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Understanding Data-Less Apps: The Future of IT

21 Sun Dec 2025

Posted by in All Data, Ask Martyn, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Image1Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Dublin 9th May 2017 –  revised 21st December 2025

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Energising the Agile Way of Working brand and mindset

10 Mon Jun 2019

Posted by in agile, agile way of working, agile@scale, business strategy, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, IT strategy, Strategy

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On my way to Léon

Martyn Richard Jones

Brussels 10th June 2019

Today I want to talk with you about energising the Agile Way of Working brand.

Sadly, the Agile Way of Working movement seems to be temporarily on the wane. The adoption rate of AWOW has not risen in line with expectations. It’s stuck in the doldrums between Scylla and Charybdis. Which makes for frowns all around.

But, me being me, I didn’t leave it at that. That’s a challenge, right there! Let’s go for it! Let’s turn those frowns upside-down

As result, I searched for a way to help the Agile@Scale crowd out, and I eventually came up with ten amazing pieces of incredible advice on how to easily make ‘Agile Way of Working’ truly something worth having around.

So, here we have it:

  1. First, change its name from the
    Agile Way of Working to the Agile Way of Whacking Off (Agile WOWO), you know, a
    touchy-feely way to “sex up” requirements. Bush and Blair style.
  2. Epics will be referred to as
    Dodgy Dossiers, User Stories will become Curated Jokes and Sprints will become Streaks.
  3. People working on Streaks will
    be known as Streakers, chapter members will be known as Schleppers and guild
    members will be known as Schmucks, everyone else will be referred to as Bernie
    or Helen.
  4. Every morning Dodgy Dossier Owners
    must repeat the term “Agile Operating Model” until they puke their
    guts out.
  5. All Scrum and Kanban boards are
    be replaced with life-sized wack-a-mole models.
  6. Only those kitted out as My Little
    Pony or Princess Line can use coloured post-it notes.
  7. Anyone caught using the names
    Google, Spotify, Netflix or Zappos.com will be denied the oxygen of publicity.
  8. Anyone evidenced repeating the terms
    “by design”, “learning journey” and “minimum viable
    product” will be denied the oxygen of oxygen.
  9. Anyone caught using comic images
    of rockets, astronauts or planets (including the sun) anywhere in their
    “content” will be forever referred to as a feckin space-cadet.
  10. If you can’t defecate rainbows on
    demand then you have no right being involved in Agile at Scale or the Agile Way
    of Whacking Off.

There you have it. Ten jolly and sensible policies for a happy world of Agile at Scale and Agile WOWO.

Many thanks for reading,

This is Martyn Jones of goodstrat.com – THE GOOD STRATEGY COMPANY

Until next time.

Contact me at martyn dot jones at goodstrat dot com

Leadership 7s – Episode 1 – S01E01

03 Mon Jun 2019

Posted by in business strategy, Good Strategy, Information Management, IT strategy, leadership, Leadership 7s, Management, project management

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Leadership 7s S01E01

This is the first in a series of management talking points. The name Leadership 7s has been influenced by the great game of rugby, which is was the emblematic game of my youth and a passion of the home country of my Mom and Dad, Wales.

In fact, much of what I learned about leadership in my formative years came from fundamentally social influences such as rugby union.

So, today I want to address seven talking points that deal with aspects of leadership, coaching and management.

STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design

28 Tue May 2019

Posted by in agile, agile@scale, All Data, Architecture, Assets, awareness, behaviour, business strategy, Creativity, Dogma, IT strategy, Strategy, structured intellectual capital, Value

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cropped-p4010326.jpgMartyn Richard Jones

Bruxelles 28th May 2019

To begin at the beginning

To paraphrase the great Bob Hoffman. Just when you thought that if evangelists for Agile were to generate one more ounce of bullshit the entire fucking solar system would explode, what do they do? Exceed expectations.

And how did they do that? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Agile at Scale with all the miscellaneous, spiced-up and vainglorious crap-on-the-side that accompanies it.

Continue reading →

Consider this: Clueless in IT! Can‘t listen. Aren‘t learning. Won‘t win.

19 Sun May 2019

Posted by in Inform, educate and entertain., IT Circus, IT fraud, IT strategy, IT World, listening, Philosophy, Polemic, Politics

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Aranjuez, Spain

Martyn Richard Jones

Bruxelles 19th May 2019

Listen well

I am a big fan of listening well and in continually improving listening skills. Yes, there are times when we can over-listen but this is also linked with skills of diplomacy and politics. How we listen should inform us a lot about what we and others really are.

So, whilst I am a big advocate of listening well I see that the world of business, and especially the sub-world of IT, is plagued with vain, impulsive and badly informed vote-takers who stubbornly resist the need to listen well and who will attempt to deftly fill the whole of the available time bashing their gums in communicating what are to all intents and purposes vacuous inanities and long litanies of meaningless clichés, full of terms that they either abuse or misunderstand; or even a bit of both.

And, as anyone who has worked with IT will know, I am not making this up. We used to call this charlatanry now we simply call it consulting. It still isn’t turning a pig’s ear into a silk purse, no matter how much people insist. But, there it is, in all its magnificent mediocrity.

Some people tell me it’s because IT attracts people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome; whatever that is.

I tend to put this refusal to listen down to other things; my money is firmly on arrogance and ignorance.

But, they just don’t get it, do they? Continue reading →

Postmodern Digital Stories: We’ve never seen anything like this before

23 Wed Aug 2017

Posted by in business, Business Intelligence, business strategy, digital transformation, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, pomo, postmodern, Social Media, Strategy

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Picture2Martyn Richard Jones

Dunny on the Wold, 23rd August 2017

The prevailing conventional wisdom is that innovative technologies and their novel use are having an effect on many peoples’ lives. Indeed, the fascination with the possibilities offered by social media, the internet and the age of data is becoming all pervasive. Of course, not all is goodness and light. Some aspects, such as Denial of Service attacks, phishing without a permit and creatively-ambiguous chimping, mark the down side of this story. Continue reading →

STRAIGHT TALK: How to turn data into knowledge

02 Wed Aug 2017

Posted by in All Data, Architecture, Big Data, Big Data Analytics, data architecture, Data governance, data management, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strategy, Inform, educate and entertain., information, Information Management, Information Supply Framework, IT strategy, Knowledge, knowledge management, Marketing, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, Sales, structured intellectual capital, wisdom

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Martyn Jones

Zurich, Switzerland – 3rd August 2017

Image2If anyone can turn data into knowledge then that person is me.

Let me explain.

I am a data architecture and management professional. For more than three decades I have been acquiring knowledge and experience in the design and delivery of effective data and solutions architectures for a wide range of projects and in a wide range of (mainly large global or regional) enterprise clients.

Therefore I think I can reasonably presume to have built up quite a good personal body of knowledge when it comes to applied data architecture and management.

As well as being a professional in the management and architecture of data, I have also considerable knowledge and experience in the areas of information management, artificial intelligence and knowledge management (structured intellectual capital).

So, what about turning data or information into knowledge? Continue reading →