Make It or Buy It? A Manufacturer's Hard Lesson From a Year of Shortages
When a key component went scarce, one firm rushed to bring it in-house. The make-versus-buy decision is rarely as obvious as it looks under pressure.
Read more →Insights
XNM Blog
Practical guidance on capital projects, governance, financing, and delivery for Indigenous and public-sector leaders.
Articles
What a Single Sheet of Paper Taught One Recovering Team About A3 Problem Solving
A hybrid operations team kept relaunching the same fix. The A3 method forced them to slow down, agree on the real problem, and finally make it stick.
Read more →The Standup Nobody Talked In: A Scrum Master Learns to Facilitate
A remote team's silent meetings had little to do with the team and everything to do with how they were being run. Facilitation, not authority, fixed it.
Read more →When the Roof Leaked: Building Quality In Instead of Inspecting It Later
A community centre project taught one team that quality you plan for costs far less than quality you chase after the fact. Here is what they changed.
Read more →Demand-Driven MRP: Planning Around Buffers, Not Forecasts
DDMRP places strategic stock buffers at the right points and replenishes them off real demand, so a shaky forecast no longer ripples chaos through the whole supply chain.
Read more →Walking the Gemba Without Putting Anyone on Trial
A gemba walk means going to where the work happens and learning from it. Done with respect, it surfaces problems; done badly, it just scares people quiet.
Read more →Psychological Safety on a Scrum Team: What It Is and How to Build It
Psychological safety is what makes a Scrum team honest in its events. Here is a plain explanation of the idea and concrete ways to grow it on a remote or hybrid team.
Read more →Milestone Payments, Explained: Paying for Progress, Not Promises
A plain explainer on tying contract payments to milestones — what a milestone really is, how to define one, and the mistakes that turn a good idea into a dispute.
Read more →Digital Supply Chain: What Good Looks Like, and What Doesn't
A side-by-side look at mature digital supply chains versus the ones that just bolted software onto old habits — and how to tell which one you're building.
Read more →Where Work Goes to Die: Reading Handoffs in a Swimlane Map (Good vs. Bad)
A swimlane diagram makes ownership and handoffs visible. Done well it exposes where work stalls; done badly it's just a flowchart with stripes. Here's the difference.
Read more →Scrum Off the Screen: What It Looks Like When Operations and Construction Get It Right (and Wrong)
Scrum was born in product teams, but it works on job sites and in operations too — if you keep the rules and drop the software jargon. A good-versus-bad look.
Read more →Managing Vendors on a Project: What Good Looks Like, What Bad Looks Like
The difference between a vendor who delivers and one who drains your project rarely shows up in the contract. It shows up in how you manage the relationship.
Read more →