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 […]
There’s a discussion on a mailing list about a partially committed-to project: there aren’t enough people on the project, the people don’t have the time to do the work because they are interrupted all the time by support of previously released applications. The only people available are part-time people who are not available when the
I’m writing for gantthead.com this year, about agile and lean project portfolio management. My first article was posted back when I was so sick. See The Game of Risk. You can leave comments there, or if you prefer, here.
We are living in a time of economic uncertainty. Fine. For some people, that might mean a hunker-down, reduce-risk, stick with what we know mentality. I take a contrarian’s approach: Start the risky projects. If we don’t start the risky projects, how can we discover a breakthrough, reduce waste, or innovate enough to work our
After I returned home from the Sweden PSL, I had a cold, and then have been redesigning simulations for my upcoming (tomorrow!) customized project management workshop. At PSL, we invoked one idea repeatedly: the zeroth solution. The zeroth solution is the simplest thing that could work. So, if you need a simulation for a workshop,
My most recent Stickyminds Column, Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: Should You Commit, Kill, or Transform is posted. Enjoy!
I taught several PM workshops last week in Israel. The Israeli project managers have the same concerns that my US students do–it’s difficult to imagine moving to Agile or even just integrating agile methods into your project if you have specialists. Specialists increase project delays in these ways: They aren’t available when you need them.
Orac’s post, Jon Stewart on the Detroit bailout, points to Stewart’s perspective on the bailout. (Watch the video; it’s hilarious.) Some paraphrases and quotes from Stewart: ‘Congress… doesn’t know what the financial industry does and doesn’t want to look stupid.’ (paraphrase of Stewart) “The auto industry has a product that’s tangible and easy to complain
I can’t tell if this is a compliment or not, but David Anderson is already disappointed with the Agile 2009 program. Since we haven’t even opened the submission system yet, never mind chosen the program, I’m surprised. What David is reacting to is my organization of the program committee. (The potential compliment is that David
Chris asked in his comment, how about using the word ‘abandoned’ for projects that are “finished”? I just don’t think of completed projects as abandoned. Let’s separate the product from the project. Projects complete. Products may never be done, but projects do finish, sometimes whether we want them to or not. I was working as