In my first post, Why We Have Too Much Pressure and Planning & Too Little Delivery, I discussed the issue of too much planning and how that reduced delivery. In this post, I’ll address how to increase delivery by planning less. (I have a draft post of the system view of how too much planning reduces […]
I work with many teams that have extensive product backlogs. Each iteration has a backlog of more items than the team can typically finish. Worse, some organizations want many quarters’ worth of backlogs, as in the image in this post. There are several problems with long and extensive backlogs: They tend to be wishlists of
This is the October 2024 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. Back in my August newsletter, Two Tips to Tease Apart Sneaky Problems and Make Progress, Axel, a project manager, and Barbara, part of the portfolio team, realized they had a sneaky problem of too
Do you have an overstuffed backlog the way Jenny did in Create More Success: How to Say No to “Everything” to Say Yes to What’s Necessary Now? I offered “now” advice in that newsletter. But what about the future? How can you prevent an overstuffed backlog, roadmap, or all those great ideas from interrupting your
I started this series by sharing my status of too much WIP (Work in Progress). My WIP was making me slightly crazed and I explained how I worked to reduce it. In case you’re wondering, here’s my current status: 3 presentations still on the list (I completed 2, including the one I recorded). The online
I hate the fact that I let my WIP get this high—and I’m glad I’m working it down. (I wrote why I let my WIP get this high on my other blog in the post, What Would It Take for You to Fail to Success?) My status today: Finished one more presentation and need to
I’m halfway through this week of working through my too-high WIP. So far, I exposed my WIP and talked about how I planned to use continuous flow in Part 1. Part 2 was about cycle time and using Cost of Delay to make easier decisions. Today is about why I don’t use a real backlog
Many months ago, Rebecca asked an interesting question about technical debt in projects. She asked, How to start when there’s a really big mess? In that case, small, just being a professional clean-up acts may not even make a dent. Of course, as with any good question, the answer is, “it depends.” And the biggest
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
Tristan, the senior manager in charge of all projects, strides into Ilene’s office and plunks himself down in her visitor’s chair. “Ilene, you are the project manager in charge of the project to save the company, right?” Ilene nods. “I really need you to fit this other feature into this release,” Tristran says. “We’re toast