An update from the BetaCodex Network: New book, new research, transformations, events and more
A lot is happening in the BetaCodex movement this autumn
Forthcoming book: What would Ohno-san do?
Stefan Schmeing and I just finalized editing and design work for What would Ohno-san do? - a book with more than 160 quotes straight from the great Taiichi Ohno (1912-1990), world-famous architect of the Toyota Production System. It will be the first-ever book of Ohno quotes, and the 3rd volume in the What would XXX do? series of books by BetaCodex Press – after two collections of quotes by W. Edwards Deming and Peter Drucker, which we published in 2023. Both books are available in print and ebook formats.
I can say from the heart that the forthcoming Ohno book turned out beautifully - much better than I expected, thanks to the hard work put in by
. Stefan did a wonderful job with picking most of the quotes for the book. His initial collection of Ohno’s quotes got us firmly started into the project a few months ago. Throughout the whole process of editing, working with Stefan was delightful and speedy at all times.Silke Hermann was the first to read the book’s full manuscript, a couple of days ago. I can report that Silke laughed long and hard while skipping through the pages. Among the things she shouted out during reading was: “I love him!” – referring to Ohno-san, of course. If you know Silke, you can imagine now that you will get a lot from this book. Publication of What will Ohno-san do? is due on 03 November. You can already pre-order the book from Red42! This way, you will be among the first to receive your copy. The book will become available for pre-orders everywhere around the world over the next two weeks or so.
New research: Time-Oriented Software Development
BetaCodex Network paper No. 26 is coming! Publication will happen during the month of October. as we are putting finishing touches on the breakthrough Beta approach called Time-Oriented Software Development, TOSD. It’s an exciting moment for me, personally, as I had for years tried figure out a way to make software development Beta and much, much more effective. Now that we have found a way to accomplish both, I am sure: TOSD promises to be big. One could say that time-orientation is finally putting software development from the head on its feet – making good on the original promise of agile. One might also say that TOSD promises a new beginning for the agile movement: Truly beyond command-and-control, beyond batch thinking, beyond hierarchy and steering.
This paper is my first research collaboration with Pradtke CTO
, and I am delighted that Sebastian accepted my invitation to co-author both the research paper and the open source approach with me. As TOSD is being put to work at Pradtke, there could have been no better collaborator to make the concept public with me. Sebastian Kubsch and I are not just preparing the paper’s publication, however. We are also planning a conference on TOSD, which will happen in early 2026. And we are developing a workshop for companies or development teams that want to go beyond conventional scrum and agile, adopting time-orientation, for good.Expect a lot of activity around TOSD to unfold later this month!
Beta transformation work: Cases and consulting practice
On 01 November, a Red42 client celebrated the Go Live of its Cell Structure Design, with 45 cells getting to work within new, decentralized structure, and entirely new team constellations. Another Red42 client, Pradtke, is proceeding well with Time Oriented Software Development. Early results are showing already: Here, software feature output in September alone “has been higher than in the 12 to 18 months combined”, according to the company’s managers. Not bad, eh?
An online session on BetaConsulting for all German-speaking members of the BetaCodex Network has been set up for mid-October. The session will be hosted by Silke Hermann and Hans Fischer-Schölch. Get in touch with Hans if you would like to take part in the session!
Live events in Bochum, Wiesbaden, Belgrade
At Pradtke in Bochum(Germany, a live event about the company’s recent Beta transformation and its almost 12 month-long experience with Cell Structure Design is going happen in November - hosted by André Pradtke and his team, with a little help from Andrea Heym of Bayer Bitterfeld. Bayer Bitterfeld also transformed itself last year, as part of Bayer’s widely-lauded DSO initiative. The Bitterfeld plant has seen wonderful results unfolding during the transformation itself and after it went live with its ground-breaking, decentralized structure, in January 2025. During the Bochum event, there will be discussion on the practice, theory, cases and challenges of Beta transformations and decentralization. Participation is invitation-only. Please get in touch with Andre Pradtke if you are interested in being part of the event.
There will be a few more public events offline happening soon: Join me in Serbia during Regional Scrum Gathering Belgrade on 7 November. And a few tickets are still available for the 27th edition of the Almost-Free BetaCodex day in Wiesbaden on 17 November - my format for consultants, practitioners and everybody interested in Beta adoption. Get your ticket now! As for online events: Sign up to my virtual events in German during the next few months, on overcoming Fixation on Acceptance, on Time-Oriented Work Systems and Lean Transformation.
Beta content and Beta products
and I published episode No. 74 of BetaCodex LIVE last week, on Theory FOR Practice (not theory OR practice. With the next episode, we will celebrate 75th Beta podcast episodes in total. Which seems like a great moment to ask you all for suggestions for future episodes: Who should we invite as podcasts guests, what should be future topics? You are invited to suggest guests and topics to us, or even to propose your own participation in an episode.Over the last few months, lots of new content has been published on the Red42 web mag Transforming organizations for good. Fast, and on this Substack here. With these two online magazines, I think we are making advancements in BetaCodex thinking, research and practice truly transparent - free of charge and in an optimal format. You are invited to add to content yourself, and to propose articles for publication.
Lastly, I have admit that our joint work on the BetaCodex Thermometer by Ernesto R. Corona (
) and Alejandro Faguaga is advancing less quickly than I hoped. There are good reasons why Silke and I have been somewhat slow to get our work on the tool done, as you can see above, but we have a great deal of ideas for the diagnostic and hope to get back to them soon. In the meanwhile, you should try out the Thermometer yourself - it is available in English and Spanish. And it is seriously useful.As always, I would like to invite you to get involved in BetaCodex Network research! You can find an overview over current research topics and projects here, and read about the network’s way of engaging in collaborative research here. I am looking forward to your contributions, and to your comments to this article.