Many of my clients have large “appetites”: they want to create ambitious products with many features. Even though I recommend they start small and iterate their way to that ambitious product, these (smart people) still say they want to start with “more.” They think the team needs to see this ambitious product vision to know […]
I’m a huge fan of team-based collaboration to complete small stories through the architecture. (The image above shows three small stories implemented through the architecture.) More collaboration means lower WIP (Work in Progress). That lower WIP allows the team to increase their throughput (finished features) and lower cycle time (release something useful faster). (See how
I had so much fun recording a podcast with the Product Confidential people, Evie Brockwell and Michael Palmer. See the episode: The Essence of True Agility with Johanna Rothman. Check out the episode on Spotify and on Apple. Note: I do not use Spotify, nor do I use Apple, but I found the podcast in
I’ve been working with a new-to-the-organization senior leader, Steve, who struggles with this challenge: He wants to capitalize some operational expenses. (That’s a move from OpEx to CapEx.) He is convinced that will give him some freedom to change things while everyone is still working hard. So they’ve asked all the technical people to fill
This is the April 2025 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.Early in the agile community, people referred to the Product Owner as the “single wringable neck.” Somehow, if the product owner didn’t define the stories well, or create acceptance criteria, or even represent what someone
Some writers don’t believe the promise of my Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer book. They don’t believe writing can be fun. Or that writing can free your mind to think of more ideas as you write. They tell me writing is a slog, that they hate it. And they can’t wait to finish the piece.
Each week for a little over a year, I’ve been recording a little podcast and video. It’s called “60 Seconds of Johanna’s Writing WIP.” I’m doing this as an experiment for two reasons: Market the writing before I publish it. (Yes, the “launch” is a form of marketing, but I’m also planning to experiment with
When I wrote Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, I included this chart, the Iterations Content Chart as part of a possible dashboard. I created that chart to clarify the challenges a specific team faced. They had problems with multitasking and the inevitable changes. The first way to use an iteration contents
Are you trying to use story points for estimation? If so, you might have encountered these problems: Story points reflect the ideal thinking of the team, not the actual experience of the team. Your managers don’t want story points—they want durations and dates. In the absence of sufficient information, everyone makes up fiction (human stories)
I had the pleasure of interviewing Stefan Wolpers about his new book: The Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide: Challenges Every Scrum Team Faces and How to Overcome Them. Here’s our conversation: Stefan’s LinkedIn profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanwolpers/ And here is a universal book link for Stefan’s book (all the stores in one link): https://books2read.com/u/mVn8JJ