When we arrived in Minneapolis, I tried to find an elevator down to baggage claim. (Yes, my knee is not working well enough to take an escalator.) I did find one, but it said “employees only.” Many people who travel are employees. They are just not your employees. No, I didn’t use the elevator–although I […]
Mark and I visited his family in the Midwest. We used miles to pay for my ticket. Aside from spending 50,000 miles (is it possible to get a ticket for 25,000 miles? We haven’t in years), it cost $5 for the ticket, $75 for the “services fees” and $15 to check one bag. Yes, this
I was reading Ralph’s post, Whose Fault Is It?, and I realized that if you don’t know enough about management, you can misunderstand the root cause. Ralph’s example is of defects in an iteration and how they were not detected early enough because the acceptance criteria were missing. The criteria were missing because the testers
I spoke recently with a (new) Scrum Master with a team who’s new to Scrum. One of the team members is a little stuck. He doesn’t feel comfortable going to the task board to take a task when he’s done. He wants to wait until someone else is ready and then work with that person.
I don’t normally pay much attention to these kinds of things, but what the heck, this will give Jurgen a link back. Jurgen has collated the Top 100 Blogs for Development Managers (Q3 2008). I have no idea if he will continue to do this quarter after quarter (!). I’m glad that other people find
I was trying to address the issue of ROI (Return on Investment) in the project portfolio book. I don’t buy project ROI. First, the idea of a project for software is an artificial construct—our consumers buy running tested features, that we happen to package in a project to release as a product. But the idea
In July, I sent out the Pragmatic Manager email newsletter: 90% Done is Not Almost Done. I have finally posted it. Enjoy!
Bob Payne interviewed me at Agile 2008. We spoke about my initial plans for Agile 2009, and my (in-writing) project portfolio book. The link is here: Agile 2009 – Johanna Rothman – Agile Portfolio Management and Agile 2009. I had a blast with Bob. If you’re wondering why it sounds like I’m chewing my cud
Glen Alleman has a post about program management, Managing Multiple Projects is Called Program Management which got me thinking. (I’ve written about program management in the past also: Program Management: Multiple Projects With Multiple Deliverables.) But in the portfolio management book, I defined a few ways to think about your projects as programs: You, and
When I teach coaching or feedback skills, I teach them in the context of work. At work, as long as the feedback is about the work, or the work relationships, or it’s a question of safety, feedback is appropriate. Coaching, as long as it’s about work behavior is appropriate. But a funny thing happened to