The seven guiding principles

Universal recommendations that hold regardless of strategy or structure. There’s no hierarchy; use them together.

• Focus on value: every activity links to stakeholder value. The gotcha: first identify who you serve (customer, sponsor, user).
• Start where you are: reuse existing capabilities, tools, people. Starting from scratch wastes existing competence.
• Progress iteratively with feedback: small increments, MVPs, feedback loops. Avoid analysis paralysis; fail early.
• Collaborate and promote visibility: work across boundaries, make work visible. Collaboration is not consensus, and invisible work looks low priority.
• Think and work holistically: nothing stands alone; all four dimensions, end to end. Factor PESTLE into decisions.
• Keep it simple and practical: minimum steps, cut non-value work. Don’t design for every exception; make general rules.
• Optimize and automate: tech scales the work after the process is sound. The sequence: understand, simplify, optimize, then automate. Never automate a bad process.

The optimize-and-automate ordering and the “collaboration is not consensus” line are the two most quotable traps here.