Vol 8, #8: Three Myths and Three Tips I have been fortunate this year to be working and speaking internationally. And, almost everywhere I go, some manager or project manager takes me aside. “Johanna, can I ask you a crazy question?” I always answer that I’m sure the question is not crazy. The manager shakes
I’ve been working with folks making their transition to agile. One of the hardest transitions is for the managers and technical leaders. Managers are accustomed to working in timeboxes. To them, the iteration is a timebox. But, they also are accustomed to features spanning multiple timeboxes, and that’s not OK in agile. They are accustomed
I’m at the end of redesigning my website. I’m posting and tagging my articles now. These are the articles from several years ago I didn’t get around to posting because it was too much of a pain to do in Dreamweaver. Yes, I’ve transitioned to WordPress site. I’m planning to unveil it next week. I
I’ve been developing an agile architecture workshop with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock. Aside from more Murphy’s Law moments than a small project deserves, we’ve encountered a number of agile architecture and program myths. Here are three for your reading pleasure. (Just in case you aren’t sure, all of these are false–they are myths.) “We don’t need no
You interviewed with a team a month ago, and you were a little concerned. It didn’t seem as if they were keeping to their iterations. Their product owner wasn’t grooming the backlog often enough to keep the backlog filled for the release meeting. They seemed to have an awful lot of defects piling up at
I’ve been writing the networking part of the Agile Job Search book, and realized you could use some of the advice before the book is ready. I receive lots of requests to link with people on LinkedIn. Some people I’ve met at conferences or workshops. Some people I know. Some people I share common groups
The nice folks at getabstract like Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects. Some of the takeaways they highlight are: Project portfolio management helps you finish your software projects on schedule. You must understand your mission to make choices about prioritizing software projects. Managers must select which projects to undertake and
I’ve been working with several management teams who want me to train them or their project managers to take over the agile training. It’s not unreasonable from their perspective—it’s how they’ve transitioned to all the other process improvement approaches over the years. Except, none of the other process improvement approaches have been built on the
I hope that this 3-part series on how to move to continuous integration and how to evaluate if it’s worth moving to continuous integration on your program convinced you moving to continuous integration was worth it for programs. The reason continuous integration is an issue on programs, is because the lack of CI can delay
I’ve been blogging about agile architecture, and the responses have been fascinating. Some people are totally against the idea of an agile architect, regardless of the size of the program. Others are ready to give me the benefit of the doubt. In this column, let me clarify the case for (or against) the job-titled agile