I have finally opened my first writing workshop, Writing Workshop 1: Free Your Inner Writer again. It took me a while to figure out how to organize the workshop so everyone (including me) could succeed. I’m planning to offer the workshop once a quarter. See Q4 2020 Writing Workshop 1 for more details. This workshop […]
Several of my clients want to use some sort of maturity assessment for their agile transformations. Often, the maturity levels demand adherence to specific practices or processes. Some of those practices and processes work for my clients now. (I’m not so sure about others.) As my clients evolve, will what they do now continue to
I’ve spoken professionally at conferences for 25 years. I enjoy it. And, several people—all men, so far—have suggested I should “make room” for other voices. To me, that’s a solution in search of a problem. I ask them what problems they want to solve. They want speakers who are: More diverse in gender More diverse
My agile transformation clients struggle with this big question: How do we effectively reward managers? The more the organization wants or needs an agile transformation, the less the current reward structure works. How do you incent the managers? What makes sense for management compensation? Cindy, a director in a 500-person IT organization struggles with this—for
Some organizations find OKRs help them create superior objectives and achieve some of them. (OKRs are Objectives and Key Results.) The idea is that every quarter you use the company purpose to create audacious Objectives. Each objective then has 3-5 Key Results so you can measure how well you do. You’re not supposed to achieve
Do you subscribe to my Pragmatic Manager email newsletter? I’ve been writing a ton about remote work. I sent How to Manage by “Walking Around” When You’re Remote a few days ago. If remote topics interest you, join Mark Kilby, Jeff Payne, and me on a Coveros webinar about From Chaos to Successful Distributed Teams
I wrote Unearthing Your Project’s Delays a couple of years ago. I told the story of Cliff, a manager who wanted to understand why the projects were so late. I gave several talks about that article. One eagle-eyed fellow asked me this question, “How long was the time from T0 to T1?” I said, “Managers
As I complete the Modern Management Made Easy books, I realize I need to explain how much tolerance an organization has for experiments. The more clients I have, the more I realize most organizations have a sweet spot for how much they can tolerate experiments or bets. Each person has an affinity for more or
What happens when you use the word “estimate?” For many of my clients, “estimate”== guarantee. Which is not what those words mean. Even if you update the estimate based on data, too many managers still want to know, “When will it be done?” Emphasis on done. And, while managers might not remember the assumptions you
Your team says they use Scrum in two-week iterations. And, in order to “finish” everything inside the timebox, you don’t do any of these things: Refactor to simplify the code or the tests. Create automated tests. Use formal acceptance criteria on a story or for the iteration or the project. That means you have work