In Part 1, I wrote about how “Agile” is not a silver bullet and is not right for every team and every product. This post is about how management fits into agile approaches. Too often, managers think “agile” is for others, specifically teams of people. Teams need to figure out how to manage their WIP, […]
I spoke at Agile 2019 last week. I had both a great time and a heart-rending realization. The great time was meeting and reconnecting with people. The heart-rending realization is our industry is in big, big trouble. Here are my thoughts and where I think the “agile” industry is headed. Problems I See with “Agile”
Early on in my agile practice, I believed in generalizing specialists. I even wrote Five Tips to Hiring a Generalizing Specialist. However, if a team becomes collaborative, I no longer think we need generalizing specialists. That’s because the team works and learns as a team. If a team is willing to collaborate as pairs, a
Part 1 was about seeing the value in the various projects. I called the value stream a product so that people would think about who would use it and why. I suggested that we stop work on specific products when you have more products than teams. That would allow you to work on other projects
Note: I had a technical problem with my site and lost this post, even though I had published it. This is the restoration. If you subscribe to my feed, you might see this twice. I’ve been working with some clients who are trying to find the magic way to slice and dice their project portfolios.
After Mark Kilby and I collaborated on From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams, we decided to start creating online classes. We have just opened registration for our first geographically distributed agile teams class. See Prepare for Successful Distributed Agile Teams. It’s a self-study class. That means you can proceed at your own pace. You’ll
I’ve led various project kickoffs over the years. Back in the closer-to-waterfall days, we had to introduce ourselves to each other. We could then move to the project purpose and release criteria. Now that agile teams stay together, we can change the kickoff to more project-specific work. I wrote an article several years ago, Keys
A colleague asked me about the kinds of documentation the team might need for their stories. He wanted to know what a large geographically distributed team might do. What was reasonable for the stories, the epics, and the roadmap? How little could they do for requirements documentation? I start with the pattern of Card, Conversation,
When Esther and I wrote Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management, we didn’t really think one-on-ones were a secret. But, managers weren’t conducting the one-on-ones regularly. The managers canceled for other “higher priority” meetings. The first modern management book is about how managers manage themselves. Part of that management is how and when they
I’ve been working at the intersection of the project portfolio and the product roadmaps. (You can tell because of the various posts about information persistence.) Here’s what I find when I work with my clients: They have years worth of projects in the project portfolio. They have years worth of ideas in various states of description in