Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
Three Ideas to Boost Your Productivity Several Pragmatic Manager subscribers have asked me about how to build and maintain their productivity. They say they have these problems: The longer they work apart from other people, the less they have the “peer pressure” of a collaborative schedule. They find it hard to maintain focus for a long time. …
Three Collaboration Secrets to Create Your Agile Culture I’ve been working with managers and technical leaders on a big problem: How to create an agile culture. The managers and leaders want to create a successful agile culture. The people on the teams—they often want to be “left alone” to do their work. That’s not horrible. …
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Three Secrets for Improvement by Subtraction Too often, when we change something, we add to our established practices. However, many changes succeed only when you subtract something. What will you stop? Here are three questions you might consider: Who needs information in what form? Who needs to work together? Who needs the work? Secret 1: …
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Manage “When” With a Parking Lot I’ve received several comments on the most recent Pragmatic Managers: Create Successful Schedules and Three Secrets to Creating Your Focus Time. Then, the writer asks, “What do I do when I have way too much to do?” Use a parking lot. Sometimes, I use a parking lot to kill …
Three Secrets to Creating Your Focus Time I don’t like multitasking at all. And, I have many projects in progress. How is it possible to jump from one project to another—and not forget where I am? My secret is focus time—small periods of time where I focus-and-finish work. Secret 1: Write down the work you …
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New Year’s Tips for 2017 Other people like to help you plan for resolutions. Well, I’m a bit contrary. I don’t buy this resolution business. I never succeed. (I’m not alone in that.) On the other hand, I like to integrate tips for my next year from my learnings from the previous year. I’ve been …
Productive Vs. Busy I received some fascinating responses to Do You Want More Productivity? One correspondent told me that managers need to move people—especially testers—from one project where they are not busy to another project where they could help. His experience matches mine—many projects do not have enough testers. However, we do not share the …
Do You Have Too Much to Do? If you are like most of the people I work with and meet, you have too much to do. You’d like to say, “No!” to more work, but maybe you’re not sure how. The first step is to gather all the work, so you and everyone else knows …
Do You Have an Abundance or Scarcity Mindset? Have you met people at work who believe in zero-sum games, with one winner and one loser? “You must do my project. I don’t care about anyone else.” That you-against-me is an indication of a scarcity mindset. Some people believe in the abundance mindset where, together, we create …
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How Effective Are You? A colleague emailed me, asking me how she could tell if her staff was effective. She had developed a few metrics. But her gut was telling her she was looking at the wrong data. She was right. She was looking at the wrong data. Her managers wanted to know how effective …