You have options for estimation, once you have met the preconditions. If you don’t have the feature set in a ranked order, you are in trouble. That’s because if you use any lifecycle other than an agile lifecycle, the feature order matters to your estimates, and the team will discuss the feature order in addition […]
So now that you know why it’s so difficult to estimate what do you do when someone asks you for an estimate? Preconditions for Estimation First, you ask a question back: “What’s most important to you? If it’s 3 weeks before the end of the project, and we haven’t finished all the features and we
Almost every manager I know wants to know when a project will be done. Some managers decree when a project will be done. Some managers think they can decree both the date and the feature set. There is one other tiny small subset, those managers who ask, “When can you finish this set of ranked
Some program managers whose organizations are transitioning to agile are not always clear on which program team they are managing. Sometimes, that’s because the organization doesn’t always realize they need more than one program team. If you are coordinating and collaborating across the entire organization, you are part of the core program team. If you
I’m seeing ads for what should be agile program managers on LinkedIn. I can’t tell what these positions really are, but when they say “responsible for management of 15 scrum teams,” that’s an agile software program manager to me. But the distressing part of the ad is when it’s a US-based position with a base
Agile and lean approaches, with either short timeboxes or explicit limiting work in progress and a focus on transparency works for many organizations. In the past few weeks, I’ve received a number of inquiries from all sizes of organizations asking the same kind of question, “How can we go all agile?” Experiment with an Agile
Produce Something When we last spoke, you had a board and a ranked list of todos. Now, it’s time to apply your agile mindset to your todos and use your board to help you do so. Remember when I asked you to make each of your todos small, so you could accomplish each of them
I prepare for my speaking and workshop engagements. This year, I’ve been all over the world. I’ve had a great time, and my clients and audiences have had a great time, too. Well, except for this past week at my session, “The Budgeting Black Hole: Predicting the Unpredictable” at Agile 2011. There, I bombed. I
For those of you who follow All Things Agile, SQE has acquired Agile Journal. And, with that acquisition, comes a few changes. Russell Pannone, our agile buddy, has stepped away as editor-in-chief. Russell is irreplaceable. I’m not replacing him as editor-in-chief, but I am acting as technical editor for the site and I am looking
Last week, I gave a talk at WIND (Wednesday is Networking Day), here in the Boston area. It was titled An Agile Approach to Your Job Search. I decided that based on the response to that talk, I would do a series of blog posts for candidates about how to look for a job. Hiring