You have options for estimation, once you have met the preconditions. If you don’t have the feature set in a ranked order, you are in trouble. That’s because if you use any lifecycle other than an agile lifecycle, the feature order matters to your estimates, and the team will discuss the feature order in addition […]
So now that you know why it’s so difficult to estimate what do you do when someone asks you for an estimate? Preconditions for Estimation First, you ask a question back: “What’s most important to you? If it’s 3 weeks before the end of the project, and we haven’t finished all the features and we
Almost every manager I know wants to know when a project will be done. Some managers decree when a project will be done. Some managers think they can decree both the date and the feature set. There is one other tiny small subset, those managers who ask, “When can you finish this set of ranked
Edit Those Epics: Stories Don’t Span Iterations was posted on Techwell, the new site of Stickyminds.com. Yes, I will have to figure out how to change my tags/categories. Please do leave comments over there, I will be responding.
Some program managers whose organizations are transitioning to agile are not always clear on which program team they are managing. Sometimes, that’s because the organization doesn’t always realize they need more than one program team. If you are coordinating and collaborating across the entire organization, you are part of the core program team. If you
Israel Gat had a great Agile Cutter Advisor recently, the Friction of Agile (registration required). He discussed the friction of agile going up in geographically distributed teams because of the dis-economies of assimilation (the space-time continuum problem, and the issue of under-funding the infrastructure of the non US-based teams). He had a stunning (to me)
I’ve been keeping up with my email newsletters this year—at least, better this year than previously. Yesterday, I posted “Organizing Programs.” I received several emails agreeing with that one. Apparently, I struck a nerve. If you think you are supposed to be on my email list, and you are not receiving the emails, please let
As a business owner, I have to remember to manage my own WIP, work in progress. Yves Hanoulle recently wrote about his own encounter with his wip limits, and what he decided to do it with respect to his “Who Is” series. When you are a manager, program manager, project manager—anyone who leverages the work
As I work with more organizations and across more cultures, I’ve been realizing that agile exposes a huge piece of the power in the organization that many people may not want exposed. I didn’t have a name for until I read Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. In it, he talks about Hofstede’s Power distance
I’m a pragmatic realist. So, in my program management workshop and in my geographically distributed teams workshop, and in a number of my other talks and workshops this year (and next year), I’m talking about influence. Of course, I’m addressing the issue of influence without authority. You never have enough authority to do the job