Janet hesitated before going down the hall to David’s office. She turned around and sat back down and sighed. Steve stopped by her cubicle and said, “What’s wrong?” “I have this problem and I need to ask David a question. I’m really stumped. But he’s going to tell me, ‘Don’t bring me a problem without […]
In Organizing an Agile Program, Part 1, Introduction, I suggested you think about the communication paths of your programs. Instead of hierarchies, I suggested you think of networks of teams. In Organizing an Agile Program Part 2, Networks for Managing Agile Programs, I showed you how loosely connected networks might work. I explained how you
I have another management myth up on Stickyminds. This one is Management Myth 15: I Need People to Work Overtime. Managers, especially senior managers, want people to be “invested” and “motivated” to do a great job. Often, the only measure they have for that is to see people work overtime. Why? Because that’s what senior
Imagine you are transitioning to agile. You are a program manager with a few agile projects and a traditional project. How do you manage the program? Possible Technical Program with Communities of Practice Above is my drawing of what a technical program team looks like. Sally’s project is actually a small program itself. Sally is
I have a new article up on projectmanagement.com, Managing Programs with Agile and Traditional Projects. You know the problem with a program: you have some agile projects and some not-agile projects, and maybe some projects who suffer from an identity crisis. They might think they are one or the other. You might not agree with
I spoke at AgileIndyConf last week. I had a blast. Met lots of great people from Indianapolis, got to hang with people like Christopher Avery (@christopheraver), Ron Jeffries (@ronjeffries), Chet Hendrickson (@chethendrickson), Angela Harms (@angelaharms), Mike Kelly (@ michael_d_kelly), Joe Astolfi (@joeastolfi), and many more. (If I missed you, please add yourselves in the comments
I have another article posted on InfoQ: What Scrum Master Are You Hiring? I’ve noticed that many organizations are calling certain positions Scrum Masters, and they might be Scrum Masters, but to me, they are anything but. You need to do a job analysis first, and name the position second. This is all about cultural
Finding the Geek Who Fits: Five Tips for Hiring as an Agile Team is up in this month’s PragPub magazine. My colleague, Andy Lester, has an article, Being the Geek Who Fits: Don’t Forget That You’re Interviewing Them, Too. You could read the entire magazine… It’s quite good. I hope you enjoy it. You can comment
I’m at AgileIndyConf today and tomorrow. Today, I’m leading a tutorial about Agile Project Management. Tomorrow is my keynote about Agile Management. And, that got me thinking about agile management, again. To be a great agile manager, you need to be a servant leader. Okay, you understand that part. To be a great servant leader,
In Organizing an Agile Program: Part 1, Introduction, I discussed the difference between hierarchies and networks. I used Scrum of Scrums as an example. It could be any organizing hierarchy. Remember, I like Scrum as a way to organize a project team’s work. I also like lean. I like XP. I like unbranded agile. I