Imagine you have a large program, where you have several teams contributing to the success of one business deliverable. You are all trying to achieve a specific date for release. One team is having trouble. Maybe this is their first missed deliverable. Maybe it’s their second. Maybe they have had trouble meeting their deliverables all […]
Cost of delay part 1 was about not shipping on time. Cost of delay part 2 was due to multitasking. Cost of delay part 3 was due to indecision. This part is the cost of delay due to technical debt. One of the big problems in backlog management is ranking technical debt stories. It’s even
In Part 1, we discussed the cost of delay of not shipping on time. In Part 2, we discussed the cost of delay of multitasking. In this part, we’ll discuss a cost of delay due to management indecision. Here’s a problem I encounter often. A middle manager calls me, and asks for an estimation workshop.
In Cost of Delay: Not Shipping on Time, Part 1, I introduced you to the notion of cost of delay. I said you could reduce the cost of delay by managing your projects: have shorter projects, using release criteria, or selecting a lifecycle that manages the risk. Sometimes, you don’t have short projects, so projects
Do you know about the Cost of Delay? It’s the way to think about the revenue you can lose plus the cost of continued development. One of my managers many years ago had a back of the napkin approach to cost of delay. “Johanna, we want to ship this product in the second quarter this
There’s a great comment to my recent Management Myth: Performance Reviews Are Useful. The writer has these questions, which I have paraphrased: 1. How do bonuses work? Here’s the problem with bonuses in a team-based organization (agile or not). How can you tell who has done which work? Who actually knows who has contributed what?
I just finished the electronic version of Manage Your Job Search, integrating my comments from my beta reviewers. I’m getting the book ready for print and audio now. One of my realizations is that a job search is an emergent project. As much as you might want to, you cannot predict an end date. Other
Lead Your Agile Transition Through Influence I bet you’re transitioning to agile or something like it. How’s it going for you? If you are anything like many of my clients, the answer is, “meh.” Kelly, a colleague had trouble with her stories. “Everything takes us forever. We can’t get anything done in two weeks. Everything
On Managing Product Development, I say that feature teams all over the world are fine. But, how do you hire these teams ? One way is to go to that country, hire the first person yourself, and have that person hire the rest. Another way is to hire someone here, wherever here is, and have
I had a great conversation last week with someone taking a leadership course. (Not one of my courses. His instructor wouldn’t talk to him!! He’d seen one of my posts and emailed me. Of course I talked with him.) He was confused by the word “Handoff.” He thought it meant that people hadn’t done their