I’ve been working with several management teams recently. They realize they need to change how they are organized in order to really make the agile teams even more productive. For example, what good is a functional manager? If functional managers don’t need to assign tasks and check on how the work is going (the team […]
I finally heard about the almost-complete financial numbers from the Agile 2009 conference. The conference is supposed to generate enough monies for the Agile Alliance to fund research, other conferences, guest speakers, and a whole bunch of other initiatives that are on the site. I was happy, because early indications are that we did. No,
“Hey, Dan, it’s time for us to move to agile,” explained Tristan, a project manager. “Tristan, you’ve been singing that tune for a while,” replied Dan, a member of the PMO. “Well, now I have data that I think you can use with the rest of the PMO and with our senior managers. Look at
I have an article up on PM Boulevard: Choosing the Strategically Important Work. Enjoy! (I think you need to register for this site too. Free.)
I’ve been working and speaking with whole bunch of people who want to “go agile.” They are not set up for agile. They have gates for approval. They don’t have teams that projects flow through; they assign people to whatever project whenever. (growl. People are not fungible. growl) They have geographically distributed team bits (I
Last week was the Agile 2009 Conference. It was great. The stage producers and their teams had selected a phenomenal program, Elastic Communications outdid themselves as the event planners, and the volunteers helped everything proceed smoothly. Alistair Cockburn and Jared Spo0l delivered fabulous keynotes. Here’s my personal retrospective: What stood out for me: the sheer
Agile 2009 starts today. I am so excited. (I know, I’ve been saying that a lot. Well, I am 🙂 The event planners, Elastic Communications have been on top of everything and are making the whole conference come together. Open Jam looks great, with small tables and some comfy couches all over. The rooms get
I haven’t blogged about Agile 2009 in a while because I’ve been busy managing it. In the meantime, you need to know that the absolute last day to get the conference rate for the hotel is Aug 14, 2009. Do not delay. Once the hotel rooms at the conference rate are gone, they are gone.
Jurgen asked me to help publicize his survey. Ok, I’ve done it. Now, let me rant about explain why I think surveys like this are not useful, and may be harmful. A survey does not take your context into account. Surveys about any practices without considering the industry, the products, and the management don’t tell
I’ve been writing this post forever (for a month), and finally deleted that one and have started over again. We had over 1500 submissions, so the stage producers and review teams made the difficult decisions when they accepted about 20% for the program. (Difficult is not nearly descriptive enough. Complex, merciless, intricate, knotty are helpful