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Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 6, Managers Want Commitments

You’ve started thinking in feature sets. Maybe you’ve experimented with  rolling wave plans inside one quarter, so you can change and replan as you need to support your project or program. You’ve discussed flow-based roadmapping as a way to create MVPs and MVEs, release smaller value more often so you can make better decisions. You …

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Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 5, the Product Value Team

If you need to plan more often than once a quarter, how do you know how to replan? Instead of incurring the time and cost when you bring everyone together,  consider the Product Value Team. (In past writing and presentations, I’ve called this the Product Owner Value Team. I am trying to change my term …

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Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 4, Resilience, Prediction, & Feedback

One of my clients was trying—valiantly—to make their quarterly planning sessions work. They prepared, getting the big hotel room. They had plenty of supplies. The planning even went well. However, within two weeks, their plan had no relation to reality. That meant that for the next ten weeks, the product owners were “on their own.” …

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Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 3, Flow-Based Roadmapping

In Part 1, I wrote about thinking in feature sets so everyone could see smaller chunks of work. (If you can see them, you might be able to plan for smaller and deliver smaller.) In Part 2, I suggested smaller rolling waves than an entire quarter (two months, or preferably one month) so people could …

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Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 2, Rolling Wave Planning Inside One Quarter

In Part 1, I wrote about thinking in feature sets and how to quickly create a feature set of—with any luck—smaller features. That’s because features don’t arrive at the same rate and they change in value, during a quarter. Because features change in value and because some feature sets need to deliver value on a more regular …

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Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 1, Think in Feature Sets

Many teams and organizations try to create one-quarter roadmaps. Here are the problems I see: Teams spend a ton of time estimating what they might do and then they select what will fit into a quarter. They feel or are asked to commit to all that work. The product managers and project portfolio managers depend on …

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Creating Agile HR, Part 7: Agile Feedback and Coaching

What can we make more “agile” in HR? Aside from an agile approach to recruiting and hiring, we can make feedback and coaching much more iterative and incremental. Add in collaborative feedback and coaching, and appreciations, and it starts to look like an agile approach to “managing performance.” In the past, managers held all the …

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Creating Agile HR, Part 6: the Agile Compensation System

I wrote about career ladders in Creating Agile HR, Part 5: Performance Management, the Career Ladder. Once you have a career ladder, it’s easy for everyone to understand the criteria for a given level. That means you can use an “agile” approach to manage compensation. Compensation is part of career management. Career management includes: Recognition (what …

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