Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
See Your Agile Estimation Traps Agile estimation. Nothing seems to bring more fervor to an argument than by pairing the words “agile” and “estimate.” Well, controversy doesn’t bother me. Here are three estimation traps I’ve seen in agile teams: An expert signs up for their own stories, thinking it will help the team’s throughput. Your …
See Your Agile Measurement Traps In honor of my new book, Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver, this is the second in a series of four trap emails, the measurement trap. Here are three common measurement traps: You/your management thinks velocity is a target or a measure of progress. Someone (often a …
The Value of Planning I like my plans. I have several levels of plans: a year or so specifically for books and workshops, a 6-month roadmap so I stay on track or change my track, a one-month week-by-week proposed roadmap, and a weekly plan. I use a kanban board to manage my weekly plans. (See …
The Case Against Stable Teams, Part 2 In The Case for Stable Teams, Part 1 , I wrote about stable teams as a way to create jelled teams. My guideline was that the longer it took for people to be useful in the team, the more you needed a stable team. Otherwise, the cost of …
The Case for Stable Teams, Part 1 A long-time reader, Al, asked me about jelled teams. What makes a team jell? Would I please write an email about that? This is part 1 of 3 part series about teams. Often, a manager forms a new team. The team storms as the people establish themselves and …
Iterations and Increments: For Any Project A project manager, Dave, is struggling with his project. His organization is not interested in using agile. Agile has a bad name, given their three-time attempt to adopt agile. (I’ll address that problem in another Pragmatic Manager.) That’s fine. Agile is not for everyone. However, Dave knows that prototyping …
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Knowledge, Risks, and Guarantees One senior manager in an organization trying to use agile told me about his problems, “We still need to know when the project will be done. We can’t afford the risk of missing the deadline. When we spent all that time on requirements, the team knew what they were doing. We …
Plan, Plan, Plan Do you like planning? You might be one of those people who likes to make lists and plan in great detail. I love my lists. I’m not big on huge, ginormous plans, but I do like a list of what to do now and the picture of where I’m headed. You might …
Create an Environment of Delivery One of the nice things about agile and lean approaches is that they focus on delivering value. I’m a huge fan of delivering value. The larger and longer your project or program, the more delivering value is important. That’s because your organization is investing in your project or program. They …
Define Your Agile Success I bet many of you are working to use agile in your organization. Is your agile approach working for you? If you think you could use agile better, maybe it’s time to define what agile success means to you. Consider these three questions: What is valuable to us? How will we …