Welcome to the Pragmatic Manager, my monthly email newsletter. (Looking for something specific? Go directly to the archive.)
You're in the right place if you want some common-sense, down-to-earth ideas about how to:
- Organize and manage projects and programs
- Lead and serve others (regardless of your title)
- Manage yourself and your individual work
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The List/Archive of Pragmatic Managers by Year
2025:
- Leadership Tip 23: How to Speak Truth to Power
- How to See the Blind Spots That Maintain the Current System, Useful or Useless
- Three Secrets to Add More Value and Be More Effective for Any Team
- Want More Predictability? Ask About Investment and Value, Not Cost
- Three Ways to Optimize Up: Make Work Better and More Effective for Everyone
- How Autonomous Teams Help Everyone Learn and Improve
- How to Use Delivery to Move from Blame to Trust
- Help Others Say No by Changing Questions About Cost to Questions About Value
- One Secret to Free Yourself from the Overwhelm of Product Leadership Work
- One Secret to Free Yourself from the Overwhelm of Leadership Work
2024:
- Help Yourself With This Short Series of New Year's Tips
- Three Principles to Support Effective “Back to the Office” Hybrid Teams
- How to Discover Another Sneaky Problem: Product Leaders Under Pressure
- How to Start to Solve Problems That Appear to Have No Solution
- Two Tips to Tease Apart Sneaky Problems and Make Progress
- How to Reframe the Lack of Money Conversation (and Maybe Get What You Want)
- How to See and Stop Project Failure Before the Effort Starts
- Three Kinds of Parking Lots to Finish More Work and Reduce Decision Load
- Create More Success: How to Say No to “Everything” to Say Yes to What's Necessary Now
- How to Predict A Little About the Future Work Without Long Intricate Plans
- Three Tips to Focus to Deliver Better Products Faster
- Flow Metrics and Why They Matter to Teams and Managers
2023:
- Three Practical Tips to Start Your Next Year Strong
- Manage Unplanned Feedback Loops to Reduce Risks and Create Successful Products
- Three (Not So Intuitive) Tips to Make Your Work Easier and Better
- Three Reframes to Reduce Risk: Focus on Adaptability and Resilience
- Flow at All Levels to Enable Effective Self, Team, and Portfolio Management
- Three Unusual Tips to Assess Product Quality & Progress Every Day
- Three Tips to Be More Effective: Resilience, Slack, and Faster Feedback Loops
- Want to Be More Effective (and Agile)? Rethink Three Classic Management Assumptions
- How to Build Human Connections With and Among Team Members, Regardless of Their Locations
- Choose Learning Partners for Fun and Mutual Benefit
- How to Describe All the Value When You Want to Influence
- Three Secrets to Manage Multitasking Even When More Senior People Insist
2022:
- Three Planning Ideas to Support Your Future Decisions
- Work Solo or Collaborate? How to Choose Based on What Benefits You
- Create a More Collaborative Leadership Culture with Peer One-on-One Conversations
- How Leaders Might Create Working Agreements with the People They Serve
- Four Ideas to Know When Someone is Ready for Leadership or Management
- How to Start Thinking in Flow Efficiency for Better Teamwork & Throughput
- Three Options to Escape the Sunk Cost Fallacy and Reframe Into Savings
- Remote Work: Ways to Think About “Fair” Compensation and Benefits
- Three Possibilities to Move from Power Over to Power With
- Leadership Tip #18: Invest in the People You Lead and Serve
- How to Understand and Relieve the Symptoms of “Agile” Death Marches
- Three Tips to Support Your Successful Hybrid-Remote Team
2021:
- Modern Management: Three Tips to Create a Congruent Culture
- Modern Management: Use Your Integrity Even if You Fear for Your Job
- Modern Management: Catch People Succeeding
- Modern Management: Encourage Experiments and Learning
- Modern Management: Want Valuable Outcomes? Create Overarching Goals
- Modern Management: Build a Safe Environment
- Modern Management: Build Empathy with the People Who Do the Work
- Modern Management: What Value Do You Offer?
- Three Tips to Move from Certainty to Openness
- Three Practical Tips to Create Your New Normal
- Make Better Decisions When You Have Too Much Ambiguity
- How to Say, “I Don't Know” and Keep Your Job
- Create Your Peer Management Team for Fun and Profit (and to Solve Problems)
2020
- Secrets to Catch Yourself Mind-Reading
- Three Predictions About the Future of Remote Work
- Three Ideas to Boost Your Productivity
- How to Manage by “Walking Around” When You're Remote
- Three Tips to Move from Agile in Name Only to Real Agility
- Work From Home? Three Ideas for Better Project Agility
- Three Ways to Rethink Your Business
- Three Tips for Coping When You're Supposed to Lead
- Three Tips for Coping when Change Might Make You Nuts (Support Others)
- Three Tips for Coping when Change Might Make You Nuts (Start with Yourself)
- Three Secrets to Building Your Influence, Part 3, Shared Interests
- Three Secrets to Building Your Influence, Part 2, Trust
- Three Secrets to Building Your Influence, Part 1, Competence
2019
- Three New Year's Tips to Ease Your Team's Agility
- Three Collaboration Secrets to Create Your Agile Culture
- What Happened to the Beautiful Plans? (They Became Experiments)
- Create Your Agile Culture: Embrace, Not Manage Change
- Lead Your Team's Transparency and Pervasive Communication
- Hours of Overlap, the First Principle of Successful Distributed Teams
- Reframe the “How Much” Conversation to “How Little”
- Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 3: Principles Over Practices
- Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 2: Emphasize Collaboration
- Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 1: Manage for Change
2018
- Three Secrets for Improvement by Subtraction
- Manage “When” With a Parking Lot
- Create Successful Schedules: Three Tips to Rolling Wave Planning
- Three Secrets to Creating Your Focus Time
- Want a Successful Agile Transformation? Invite Managers
- How Do You Tell Your Agile Story?
- Build Your Agile Tribe
- See Your Agile Delivery Traps
- See Your Agile Estimation Traps
2017
- See Your Agile Measurement Traps
- See Your Agile Collaboration Traps
- The Value of Planning
- The Manager's Role in Creating Effective Teams, Part 3
- The Case Against Stable Teams, Part 2
- The Case For Stable Teams, Part 1
- Own Your Leadership, Part 3
- Own Your Leadership, Part 2
- Own Your Leadership, Part 1
- Being An Agile Leader
- Understand Your Project Interdependencies
2016
- New Year's Tips for 2017
- Iterations and Increments: For Any Project
- Knowledge, Risks and Guarantees
- 3 Quick Project Portfolio Tips
- Plan, Plan, Plan
- Create an Environment of Delivery
- Use the Power of Your Rumor Mill
- Scaling Agile and Lean to Programs
- Build Your Agile Leadership
- Feeling Alone on Your Agile Journey?
- Define Your Agile Success
2015
- Productive vs. Busy
- Do You Want More Productivity?
- When You Need to Commit
- Creating Trustworthy Estimates
- Do You Have Too Much to Do?
- Creating an Environment of Leadership
- Discovering Your Leadership
2014
- Johanna's 2014 New Year's Tips
- Do You Have an Abundance or Scarcity Mindset?
- Go Small to Gain Momentum
- Scale Agile With Small-World Networks
- Is Your Agile Journey Based on Problems or Process?
- How to Avoid Three Big Estimation Traps
- Standup or Handoff?
- Time for a Decision
- Three Secrets for a Successful Job Search
- Is the Urgent Consuming You?
- Emergent Projects: Managing the Unpredictable
- Three Tips for Becoming a Servant Leader
2013
- Johanna's 2013 New Year's Tips
- Take Advantage of Opportunities for Speed Coaching
- Lead Your Agile Transition Through Influence
- Small Steps, Frequent Deliverables Work
- When Is It Time for a Change?
- Creating Change That Lasts
- How Do You Change?
- Three Tips for Artisanal Change
- Knowing When an Agile Project is Done
- Why a Project Charter Works
- Explaining Options When You Coach
- Prepare to Become More Influential
- How Effective Are You?
2012
- Johanna's 2012 New Year's Tips
- Great People Create Great Products
- How Do We Treat Each Other?
- What Does Your Organization Reward?
- Your Culture: What is Okay for You to Discuss?
- Building Rapport
- Distributed? Yes. Alone? No.
- Developing and Nurturing Respect in Geographically Distributed Teams
- Building or Maintaining Agility in Geographically Distributed Teams
- Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Agile Teams
- Micromanagement is Not Transparency!
- Using Checkins to Create Transparency
- Building Trust in Any Team
- Start Your Geographically Distributed Projects Right With a Project Charter
- Always Ask the Zeroth Question About Your Projects
- Are You Being Guilted Into Doing More?
2011
- Three Myths and Three Tips
- Organizing Programs
- Plan Now For Your Next Time Out of the Office
- Who Decides What Done Means for a Program?
- Solve Problems With the Rule of Three
- Three Tips for Your Geographically Distributed Agile Teams
- Agile Programs: Possible or a Pipe Dream?
- Why Multitasking Doesn't Work
2010
- A New Year's Tip: Start Small
- Who's In Charge of Quality?
- Park Projects You Can't Staff, For Now
- Why Do Iterations Have to be the Same Duration in Agile?
- Avoid Death Marches
2009
- A Small New Year's Tip: Timebox, Not Scopebox
- You Can't Do All the Work. Now What?
- When Your Projects Are a Program
- The Problem Statement is Not Always the Problem
2008
- Hope is Not a Strategy
- Refocusing: 90% Done is Not Almost Done
- Refocusing: Emerging from the Split Focus Schedule Game
- Timeboxes Help Multisite Teams
- Discovering and Maintaining Your Project's Heartbeat, Part 2
2007
- Making Waterfall (a Serial Lifecycle) Work For You, Part 3
- Making Waterfall (a Serial Lifecycle) Work For You, Part 2
- Making Waterfall (a Serial Lifecycle) Work For You, Part 1
- Discovering and Maintaining Your Project's Heartbeat, Part 1
- How Many Emergency Projects Do You Have?
2006
- Providing Effective Correcting and Reinforcing Feedback
- Using One-on-Ones to Build Trust
- Becoming Comfortable with One-on-Ones
2005
2004
- Decreasing Project Completion Time, Part 2
- Kill Canceled Projects
- Decreasing Project Completion Time, Part 1
2003
- Use Overtime as a Last Resort
- Choosing Facilitation
- Three Parts of Estimation
- Appreciations, Personalized Thank You's
2002
2001
2000
- Steering vs. Repeatable
- The Perils of Parallel Projects
- Asking Good Interview Questions
- When You're Having a Bad-Manager Day
1999
- Program Management
- Managing People: Using Influence
- Solving Problems
- Release Criteria, or “Is it Ready to Ship?”
- “It Depends”
- “It's Just the First Slip”
- “What Does It Cost You To Fix A Defect?”