Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I’ve been coaching several teams with a problem: they like to work in iterations. And, they have milestones that are not on a milestone boundary. What should they do? (I suggested flow and you should have heard their response. Well, maybe not.) Here’s why people want these milestones: The team can’t deliver (for whatever reason) as continuous …
Continue reading “Creating Milestones with Iteration-Based Agile”
There’s a twitter conversation about how to manage team compensation. How can we pay people what they are worth and compensate a team for their value? I know there are teams where I was quite valuable—not because I was “the” leader, but because I helped the team achieve our goals. And, there are teams where I …
Continue reading “Possibilities for Managing Individual and Team Compensation”
Several years ago, I wrote a post for a different blog called “Why Team Size Matters.” That post is long gone. I explained that the number of communication paths in the team does not increase linearly as the team size increases; team communication paths square when the team increases linearly. Here is the calculation where N is …
If you only read my blog, you might not know I publish a monthly newsletter, the Pragmatic Manager. The last two issues have been on agile leadership. Take a look at Being An Agile Leader and Own Your Leadership, Part 1. Those newsletters in addition to this 5-part series culminating with Becoming an Agile Leader, Part 5: Learning …
I offer three online workshops for your writing and product ownership pleasure. All three are open for registration. Practical Product Owner: Deliver What Your Customers Value and Need Workshop (Q2 session starts May 8, 2017) Writing Non-Fiction Workshop 1: Enhance Your Business and Reputation (The Q2 session starts May 17, 2017) Writing Non-Fiction Workshop 2: Secrets of …
If you are wondering, “What do I do with the work I said no to?” here’s the answer. Use a parking lot. This is the image from Manage Your Project Portfolio. I recommend just four columns: the project name, the date you put the project on the list, any notes about value, and any other …
My most recent post about how to Visualize Your Work So You Can Say No showing a couple of different kanbans was quite popular. Several people ask me how I use my personal kanban. I use paper. Here’s why I don’t use a tool: I am too likely to put too much into a tool. I …
Most people I know—even the people supposedly using agile—have too much work to do. You have project work. You have support work, formal for customer support or sales, and informal for your colleagues. You have reports to write or file, time cards to fill out, or other periodic events. You need a way to say …
I’m almost at the end of the January Practical Product Owner workshop. One of the participants has a problem I’ve seen before. They have a backlog of work, and it’s all tasks. Not a story in sight. I understand how that happens. Here are some ways I’ve seen the tasks-not-stories problem occur: The technical people …
When I talk about Minimum Viable Products or Minimum Viable Experiments, people often tell me that their minimum is several weeks (or months) long. They can’t possibly release anything without doing a ton of work. I ask them questions, to see if they are talking about a Minimum Indispensable Feature Set or a Minimum Adoptable …
Continue reading “What’s Minimum: Thinking About Minimum Viable Experiments”