Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
If you read my Three Alternatives to Making Smaller Stories, you noticed one thing. In each of these examples, the problem was in the teams’ ability to show progress and create interim steps. But, what about when you have a “wicked” problem, when you don’t know if you can create the answer? If you are …
Continue reading “Make Stories Small When You Have "Wicked" Problems”
Once you have a program (a collection of interrelated projects focused on one business goal) and you have technical debt, you have a much bigger problem. Not just because the technical debt is likely bigger. Not just because you have more people. But because you also geographically distributed teams, and those teams are almost always …
I’ve had several conversations in email and with clients recently that have all been about this question: “What do we do about our infrastructure?” Either the project or the program has to create/update/upgraded their architecture or automated test infrastructure, pay down technical debt, or somehow do something that’s not part of a story. And, that’s …
Continue reading “Thoughts on Infrastructure, Technical Debt, and Automated Test Framework”
I’ve been developing an agile architecture workshop with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock. Aside from more Murphy’s Law moments than a small project deserves, we’ve encountered a number of agile architecture and program myths. Here are three for your reading pleasure. (Just in case you aren’t sure, all of these are false–they are myths.) “We don’t need no …
I’ve been blogging about agile architecture, and the responses have been fascinating. Some people are totally against the idea of an agile architect, regardless of the size of the program. Others are ready to give me the benefit of the doubt. In this column, let me clarify the case for (or against) the job-titled agile …
Continue reading “Do You Need Titled Architects For Your Programs?”
Have you ever waited weeks for one piece of functionality so you could release a large project? Have you been in the situation where the software is waiting for the hardware? Or where the database admin held up the entire release because his work wasn’t coordinated with the feature-based teams? That’s because you were working …
Continue reading “Agile Program Management: Possible or a Pipe Dream?”