I’ve been steadily writing the project portfolio management book this summer, and was describing what I do to Steve Freeman someone today. (I’m at the Agile 2008 conference.) I explained that I had a list of things I thought should be in a chapter, but it wasn’t a real outline the way other people outline. […]
One of the big problems in organizations is how to fund projects. ROI does not work. I learned how to lie with ROI back in 1988—I can make the numbers be anything you want. But if you don’t have ROI, how do you know what projects to fund? One set of projects is the set
A reminder: I’m teaching a public project management workshop in Waltham, MA, Sept 22-24, 2008. If you would like to: Understand different lifecycles and when (and how) to use them Practice pragmatic approaches to organizing and estimating a project Learn a variety of ways to steer a project to success Learn how to develop and
I was shopping today, taking advantage of the summer sales. One of my favorite retailers offers petite sizes online, but almost nothing in the store. I go to the store to try the clothes on and then decide what to order online. I had a number of blice (blouses to those of you who are
I was speaking with a potential client about their approach to knowledge management. They think they need a senior person to organize a top-down appoach, and build a custom tool, so they know what knowledge they want to manage and have a place to put it. I don’t think that’s going to work. That approach
Jurgen interviewed me via email, 5 Easy Questions for Johanna Rothman. The questions were not easy!
John Cook wrote a blog post, Scaling the number of projects, that starts addressing the issue of why it’s everyone’s job to manage their own project portfolios. Here’s an example of the problem he’s noticed: It sounds easy to manage independent projects: if the projects are for different clients and they have different developers, just
I’ve published a podcast: How Many Emergency Projects Do You Have? Enjoy!
I received two questions this week about how well does agile allow you to do traceability matrix. Very well is the short answer. Here’s why. If you commit to implementing features (not chunks of architecture) based on user stories in an iteration, you know what you’re planning before the iteration starts. Because you’re working in
I write a roughly monthly email newsletter, the Pragmatic Manager. I (finally) posted Refocusing: Emerging from the Split Focus Schedule Game. Yes, I’m working on the July issue now. Enjoy!