Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
We often hear that agile is a mindset. That we need to change our thinking to use agility. Is that correct? That you need to change how you think first, before anything else? I can think I change my mindset all day long. However, I don’t change until I change my actions, my behaviors. That’s …
Continue reading “A Contrarian’s Perspective on Agile Mindset, Behaviors, Culture”
When I think about agile approaches to work, I think about how fast we can change and the cost of those changes. We can change the next decisions about the work because we finish the current work and release it. Multiple deliverables allow us to change what we do and what we plan next. That’s …
Continue reading “Feedback Loops Help When to Centralize or Decentralize Product-Based Decisions”
Several of my clients want to use some sort of maturity assessment for their agile transformations. Often, the maturity levels demand adherence to specific practices or processes. Some of those practices and processes work for my clients now. (I’m not so sure about others.) As my clients evolve, will what they do now continue to …
I wrote Unearthing Your Project’s Delays a couple of years ago. I told the story of Cliff, a manager who wanted to understand why the projects were so late. I gave several talks about that article. One eagle-eyed fellow asked me this question, “How long was the time from T0 to T1?” I said, “Managers …
As I complete the Modern Management Made Easy books, I realize I need to explain how much tolerance an organization has for experiments. The more clients I have, the more I realize most organizations have a sweet spot for how much they can tolerate experiments or bets. Each person has an affinity for more or …
Continue reading “What’s Your Organization’s Tolerance for Experiments?”
In the agile and lean communities, we talk a lot about transparency. This image is the transparency principle we used in From Chaos to Distributed Agile Teams. I see the most product and program success when the various teams create transparency between them, the middle of the continuum. That’s the full-product transparency. I see many …
I’m rewriting/reorganizing the Lead an Innovative Organization book. I realized I have 7 innovation principles: Clarify the organization’s purpose. Manage for effectiveness. Seek outcomes, not outputs. Flow efficiency at all levels. Encourage small-world networks of relationships. Organizational integrity. Encourage change and experiments. Anytime I’ve seen a successful innovation culture, I’ve seen these principles. (I’m trying …
Continue reading “Want Business Agility? Use These Seven Innovation Principles”
If you’re like many of the teams I meet, you’ve sort of got a handle on things. You can release. Your product mostly works. And, then Something Happens. And, your team has trouble recovering. That’s brittleness in the system. You can build resilience as a team. In this post, I’ll summarize how your team can …
When I started this series about team brittleness and resilience, I expected to discuss winter weather in the Boston area. Every year, we expect several large snowstorms. And, when it snows hard and long, we should stay off the roads so the plows can clear the snow. The organization and team I wrote about in …
Continue reading “Build Team Resilience: Work “Anywhere” and “Anytime” (Part 3)”
This series is about helping a team create a less brittle environment—more resilience. Part 1 was about individual work. This part is about shortening feedback loops. Brief description of the problem at a recent client: Person A checked in code that broke an “unrelated” part of the system. I’ll call this checking in code in …
Continue reading “Build Team Resilience: Shorten Feedback Loops (Part 2)”