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Why Managers Believe Multitasking Works: Long Decision Wait Times

When I teach any sort of product/project/portfolio management, I ask, “Who believes multitasking works?” Always, at least several managers raise their hands. They believe multitasking works because they multitask all the time. Why? Because the managers have short work-time and long decision-wait time. If you are a manager, your time for any given decision looks …

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Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 6: Creating the Agile Organization

We might start to think about agile approaches as a project change. However, if you want to “scale” agile, the entire culture changes. Here is a list of the series and how everything changes the organization’s culture: Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 1: Creating Cross-Functional Feature Teams. Without feature teams, I don’t see how you can …

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Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 5: Agile Management

One of the challenges I see in organizations is how managers can use agile approaches. One of the biggest problems is that the entire organization is organized for resource efficiency (think silos of functional experts). Agile approaches use flow efficiency. Thinking in flow efficiency changes everything. Many people in organizations believe that dividing up the …

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Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 4A: Sharing Agile Outside of Product Development

Note to my dear readers: As I write, I realize this series is growing. Thank you for your understanding in advance. In Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 4: Sharing Agile Outside of Product Development, I wrote about an independent workgroup with one stream of work. I used Customer Support as an example. Support has one stream: …

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Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 4: Sharing Agile Outside of Product Development

Here’s where we are so far in this discussion of what it might mean to “scale” agile approaches: Part 1: Creating Cross-Functional Feature Teams (Teams that can produce features on a regular basis) Part 2: Programs of Cross-Functional Feature Teams (Programs (multiple teams working together) that deliver features on a regular basis) Part 3: Agile Product …

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Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 3: Creating Agile Product Development Capabilities

In the “Scaling” Agile: Part 1, I wrote about cross-functional collaborative teams. The cross-functional collaborative feature team is the basis for “scaling” agile. In “Scaling” Agile, Part 2, I wrote about programs. I realized I need another part before my original part 3 :-). This new part 3 is about creating agile product development capabilities. …

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Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 2: Program Management for Product Development

The first post was about scaling functions to working as collaborative agile teams. See Defining “Scaling” Agile, Part 1: Creating Cross-Functional Teams. Now, let’s talk about moving to multiple teams working together, a program. The good news is that you have a few cross-functional teams. They’ve been delivering as project teams. And, now you have a …

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Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 3

I started this series writing about the need for coaches in Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 1. I continued in Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 2, talking about the changed role of managers in agile. In this part, let me address the role of senior managers in agile and how coaches might help. For years, …

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Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 2

In Coaches, Managers, Collaboration and Agile, Part 1, I wrote about circumstances under which a team might want a coach. It wasn’t an exhaustive list. It had several questions defining when coaches might help the team to become agile, not be cargo cult agile. One of the reasons we might need coaches for a team is because …

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