Interview with Ian Dees and Miles Forrest Posted
Ian Dees and Miles Forrest interviewed me about Manage Your Project Portfolio. We had a great time in the interview, and it shows. Enjoy!
Books, MPD
MPD
MPD, project management
But I Need to Know When the Project Will Be Done
I was talking with a new-to-agile project manager, who said he needed take the first iteration to do design and estimation. I asked why. “Because our management needs to know exactly when the project will be done.” “Do you think your iteration of design and estimation will provide you a perfect estimate?” “Uh.” He paused.
MPD
Appreciations from Japan Trip
I had a great time in Japan last week with Esther. On the flight home, we started plotting our next book! @kaztak_en, Thank you for your invitation to see your team. It looks and sounds as if you are on your agile way. @kdmsnr, Thank you for your gracious hosting on Tuesday. You were even
MPD, portfolio management
Don’t Start a Project with Scarcity
I was talking with a project manager the other day. He said, “I don’t have enough developers, testers, or UI people. What am I going to do?” I said, “Well, you have enough people if you have more time. Do you have more time?” He rolled his eyes, and said, “What do you think?” “Then,
MPD, program management
"Headquarters" and "Remote": Language Matters
I’ve been working with program teams lately, and some of them have issues when they talk about different teams on their programs when they use words such as “headquarters” and “remote” locations. The headquarters teams tell me the remote teams don’t listen to them and the remote teams tell me the headquarters teams don’t hear
agile, MPD
Agile Programs Require Agile Teams, Up, Down, Sideways
A few months ago at Agile Boston, Mike Cottmeyer said that when he looks at teams who want to scale agile, he looks at their ability to create working teams. If they can create teams, they can scale. If they can’t, they have little hope of scaling agile. (Mike, if I’m misquoting you, I’ll correct
agile, MPD
How Short Can Your Program Charters Be?
A great way to destroy a program is to avoid writing a charter. When I do assessments or work with teams, I often find that programs do not have charters, or that the charter is too big, or is missing some key piece of information. But what do you really need in a charter? Too
management, MPD
Raúl Curbelo Remembrance
Last night, the New England Society of Applied Spectroscopy had an evening of remembrances for Raúl Curbelo. Raúl was a pioneer in the development of spectroscopic instrumentation. I worked for Raúl at Digilab from 1978-1982. I spoke last night. Here is an excerpt of my comments: I can’t speak to the breakthroughs Raúl developed in
MPD, program management
Starting Agile with a Program
The good news is that agile has name recognition. The bad news is that a number of organizations are trying to start agile in a big-bang way, especially on programs. Program management is hard enough without throwing a new approach to projects into the mix. Since so many of you are emailing me about this,
Books, MPD
Another Review of Manage Your Project Portfolio
Jonathan Rasmussen wrote a lovely review of Manage Your Project Portfolio. The part I like the best is: If you are looking for advice around what to measure when tracking your projects, how to come up with an actionable mission statement, or just how to effectively communicate the state of your portfolio ask Santa for