Author name: Johanna

I help you identify and solve the problems that prevent you from releasing systems, hiring the right people, deciding which project to work on next. I take a pragmatic approach: what will work best for you, now? Some people call me a focuser. Some call me an accelerator. When I work with people, first we define our goal together. Typically, it's to get a better product out the door faster. I work with my clients to help managers figure out how to do the managing better, and how the technical contributors can contribute better, not to create a by-the-book system. I work with you, your staff, and your current product development practices. Together, we learn what works well for you and what doesn't. I believe in changing only what needs to be changed at the current time, to maximize your success. We work together to develop a blueprint for the future, and to build in capacity to recognize and implement change.

MPD, writing

Announcement: Additional Writing Workshop

I have enough people in the Writing Workshop 1: Write Non-Fiction to Enhance Your Business and Reputation to add a second section. You are right for this workshop if: You are thinking about writing more You want to improve your writing You want to develop a regular habit of writing If a blank piece of […]

newsletter

Iterations and Increments: For Any Project

Iterations and Increments: For Any Project A project manager, Dave, is struggling with his project. His organization is not interested in using agile. Agile has a bad name, given their three-time attempt to adopt agile. (I’ll address that problem in another Pragmatic Manager.) That’s fine. Agile is not for everyone. However, Dave knows that prototyping

newsletter

Knowledge, Risks and Guarantees

Knowledge, Risks, and Guarantees One senior manager in an organization trying to use agile told me about his problems, “We still need to know when the project will be done. We can’t afford the risk of missing the deadline. When we spent all that time on requirements, the team knew what they were doing. We

agile, MPD

Pushing vs. Pulling Work in Your Agile Project

If you’re thinking about agile or trying to use it, you probably started with iterations in some form. You tried (and might be still trying) to estimate what you can fit into an iteration. That’s called “pushing” work, where you commit to some number of items of work in advance. And, if you have to

MPD, writing

What I’ve Been Writing Lately

You might have noticed I have not written as much in this blog for the past couple of months as I normally do. That’s because I’ve been involved in another writing project that’s taken a ton of my time. I’m part of the writing team for the Agile Practice Guide. The Guide is a joint

agile, MPD

Iterations and Increments

Agile is iterative and incremental development and frequent delivery with cultural change for transparency. What do the words iterative and incremental mean? Iterative means we take a one-piece-at-a-time for creating an entire feature. Iterative approaches manage the technical risk. We learn about the risk as we iterate through the entire feature set. Incremental means we deliver those

MPD, writing

Registration Open for January 2017 Writing Workshops

If you are thinking about writing more or better for next year, take a look at my writing workshops. I am offering Writing Workshop 1: Write Non-Fiction to Enhance Your Business and Reputation again, so you can learn how to create a daily writing habit, write in small chunks, and start to publish. I am

agile, MPD

Efficiency Rants and Raves: Twitter Chat Thursday

I’m doing a Twitter chat November 3 at 4pm Eastern/8pm UK with David Daly. David posted the video of our conversation as prep for the Twitter chat. Today he tweeted this: “How do you optimize for features? That’s flow efficiency.” Yes, I said that. There were several Twitter rants about the use of the word

Syllabus

Writing Workshop 2: Secrets of Successful Non-Fiction Writers

Do you struggle with engaging people with your writing? Do people ever ignore your writing? Do you have trouble publishing on a regular basis? Do conferences ignore your abstracts even though you have compelling content? You’re not selling your ideas to people who need them. If you have any of these problems, this workshop is

agile, MPD

Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 3

I started this series writing about the need for coaches in Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 1. I continued in Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 2, talking about the changed role of managers in agile. In this part, let me address the role of senior managers in agile and how coaches might help. For years,

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