This is Johanna Rothman’s August 2026 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.
Do you feel as if you’re in the middle of too-frequent change? I do. Even though I only have manageable and relatively small projects, I can’t quite see around the various corners to predict what I need to do and when. Because we have frequent change, I often need to adapt to the current circumstances.
It’s even worse for my clients, with their larger efforts. They have trouble knowing what to do and when to capture a market segment. Or even to know what some customers might want. The managers want to change focus too often for the teams to be able to respond.
That’s a recipe for disaster: not knowing if the progress so far is worthwhile, or even what to plan next.
Too-frequent change is a pain in everyone’s tush.
I find guardrails a helpful way to keep me focused on my goals and to let me know if I’m making progress.
I use guardrails in these three ways:
- Orientation to make sure the team starts the work right. Especially in the middle of frequent change, we need to know we have the right focus.
- Make sure we don’t proceed too far down a “wrong” path. Change can disorient us, so watching for a “wrong” path helps us see where we might want to change.
- Offer feedback if we realize we are not making progress fast enough. Are we where we hoped we would be by now? If not, what are our options?
While I’m using a team as an example, I use guardrails for my work in exactly the same ways.
Tip 1: Orient with Guardrails
When I first moved to the Boston area, we did not have GPSes. Instead, we needed paper maps to get directions. Also, the Boston area has several interesting highway characteristics. It is entirely possible to be pointed North and be on a highway called “South.” Yes, that confused me—and still confuses area visitors.
However, I used my ability to read a map to orient myself to make sure I started off in the correct direction. Because the last thing I wanted was to be five miles down the road and realize I was going in the wrong direction. To do that, I needed to know what guardrails or signposts to look for.
While projects and programs are definitely not the same as driving on old cowpaths, we can use the idea of orientation to start the project or program right. I like to make sure we know enough about the project’s or program’s drivers, boundaries, or constraints. That will tell us how we can make tradeoffs, especially when the world feels as if change occurs faster than we can imagine.
Tip 2: Watch for Guardrail Signposts
When driving, we can watch for literal signs on the side of the road. I happen to like mile markers—as long as I know if I’m counting up or down. (That’s one of the reasons paper maps were so valuable. They told the map reader how many elapsed miles to expect at which point in the journey.)
Again, projects and programs are not like driving. However, we can assess progress with product backlog burnup charts. Or, we can look at cycle time to make sure we’re not making our work take longer. As a project or program manager, you have options, such as asking people to map their value streams. That will tell the team(s) if they need to change something about their work, such as increased collaboration.
What if your team is similar to one of my past clients? The senior people on the 20-person team said, “We do not collaborate. We work alone and we like it. You can’t make us collaborate.”
I said, “No, and I absolutely will not demand that you collaborate. However, if your cycle time is long enough, and you can’t make progress because each of you can’t get enough time with each other, you might choose to collaborate. In that case, I will coach you in ways that might work for you.”
The team decided to review their value stream map and their cycle time to see what was going on. After a week of virtually no progress, the senior team members asked, “What options do you recommend?”
I explained about pairing, swarming, and mobbing. They rejected pairing and mobbing, but decided they loved swarming. Because the team saw its data via their value stream maps and cycle time, they chose how to work.
Tip 3: See How Guardrails Can Offer Feedback, Especially with Frequent Change
(While my driving metaphor works for the first two tips, it does not work for this one.)
Sometimes, in the midst of frequent change, progress feels slippery. It’s that two steps forward, one step backward feeling.
When that occurs, I like to ask the “how little” question. I ask that question about all the work at all the levels:
- Can we reduce the number of projects we’re funding from the portfolio? If so, can we ask more teams to collaborate to finish those fewer projects faster?
- How few features can we deliver with this product and still satisfy our customer? (See Consider Product Options with Minimum Outcomes for more details.)
- How little can this team do and deliver something as clean as possible as fast as possible, to manage these frequent changes?
We get so accustomed to thinking we have to deliver “all” of it, or “many features,” or something else big, that we don’t always realize our customers might want something smaller. Teams can use those smaller chunks of work to deliver to more predictable guardrails faster. Will the team deliver “everything” right away? No. And that’s often not necessary.
Instead, when projects and programs deliver small increments of value, as often as possible, the people can make progress and adapt to those frequent changes. Guardrails help me do that, to manage how much I plan and when. They can help you, too.
Read More…
This newsletter touches on ideas in these books:
- Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects (to use “how little” thinking for the project portfolio.)
- Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver (to apply seeing progress to agile approaches.)
- Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization (to apply agile ideas to larger efforts without increasing process bloat.)
- Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility (to apply the ideas of short feedback loops so you can see how you work to adapt and adjust.)
(If you have read but not yet reviewed my books, please leave a short review somewhere, such as Goodreads. Thank you in advance.)
Links of Interest
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Here are other links you might find useful:
- Managing Product Development Blog.
- Create an Adaptable Life Blog to see the weekly question.
- My Books. You can also buy my self-published ebooks and audiobooks on my store.
- Johanna’s Fiction
- Tip Jar. (My newsletters will remain free. And I do want to offer you an option for you to show how much you value my work.)
Johanna
© 2026 Johanna Rothman
Pragmatic Manager: Vol 23, #8. ISSN: 2164-1196