Standup or Handoff? You have a geographically distributed agile team. You have team members more than six hours apart. (If you’re not sure how far apart people are, take a look at Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Teams). How do you have standups that mean something, when people have completed work, can commit to work, and […]
I write a twice-yearly column for Better Software magazine. The title of the column is called “Technically Speaking.” For this column, I decide to tackle the question of “What’s a Professional?” If you don’t already subscribe to the magazine, you do have to join the site. It’s a free registration to join.
I published another Pragmatic Manager this week, Time for a Decision. It’s about program management decisions, and collaborating across the organization. Do you receive my Pragmatic Manager emails? If you think you are on my list, but are not receiving my emails, let me know. Some of you long-time subscribers are not receiving my emails
Time for a Decision On a recent flight, I sat next to the VP of Sales for a large multinational company. Their new big product in development needs a new pricing structure that requires agreement across the organization. Can he get a decision? No. He’s conducted conference call after conference call for months. No decision.
I taught the Influential Agile Leader workshop with Gil Broza last week in Edinburgh. (That’s why I was quiet. I was traveling and teaching. No time for writing, blogging or tweeting.) One of the participants asked me what I thought about scaling agile. Before I could explain about small-world networks, not hierarchies, he said, “I
One of my clients was having trouble with estimating work they had never done before, so I wrote an article explaining spikes. That article is up on agileconnection: Need to Learn More about the Work You’re Doing? Spike It! It was a little serendipity; I taught an estimation workshop right after I explained how to
Did you see Recruiting Animal’s review of Manage Your Job Search? It’s terrific. One of the things I like best about his review is that he talks about each section of the book and explains what he likes about each section. In his review, he has a great tip on how to introduce yourself. Go
I’m not a fan of using schedule or cost estimate as a way to value the projects in your project portfolio. If you do, you are likely to miss the potentially transformative projects or programs. In Manage Your Project Portfolio, I have an entire chapter devoted to ways to evaluate your project portfolio: business value
Three Secrets for a Successful Job Search Are you looking for a job? If you are, I bet you’ve received advice from many people–whether or not you wanted it. Here are my three secret ingredients for a successful search: Secret #1: Create a system that works for you. I happen to like personal kanban inside
Join me for a webinar on March 10, 2014 at 7pm Eastern. My topic is “Overcoming 7 Common Pitfalls of Transitioning to Agile in Software Engineering.” I’m speaking as part of the Graduate Professional Studies Spring 2014 Guest Speaker Series. Register here. P.S. If you missed the webinar, here is the audio recording. Enjoy!