Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I started this series asking where “Agile” was headed. Part 1 was about the 4 big problems I see. Part 2 was why we need managers. This part is about how people want a recipe, The Answer, for how to get better at “Agile.” Before we can address what an answer might be, your need …
Continue reading “Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 3: What Is The Recipe, The Right Answer?”
Early on in my agile practice, I believed in generalizing specialists. I even wrote Five Tips to Hiring a Generalizing Specialist. However, if a team becomes collaborative, I no longer think we need generalizing specialists. That’s because the team works and learns as a team. If a team is willing to collaborate as pairs, a …
Continue reading “Rethinking the Need for Generalizing Specialists”
I’ve led various project kickoffs over the years. Back in the closer-to-waterfall days, we had to introduce ourselves to each other. We could then move to the project purpose and release criteria. Now that agile teams stay together, we can change the kickoff to more project-specific work. I wrote an article several years ago, Keys …
A colleague asked me about the kinds of documentation the team might need for their stories. He wanted to know what a large geographically distributed team might do. What was reasonable for the stories, the epics, and the roadmap? How little could they do for requirements documentation? I start with the pattern of Card, Conversation, …
Continue reading “Minimum Requirements Documentation: A Matter of Context”
Too many teams have overloaded Product Owners. The teams and PO have trouble connecting the organization’s strategy to what the teams deliver. The teams, PO, management, all think they need big planning. Too often, the POs don’t do small-enough replanning. They’re not living the principles of the agile manifesto. That insufficient collaboration means the PO …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 8: Summary: Collaborate at All Levels for the Product”
I started this series with the question: If we have teams for all other aspects of an agile approach, why wouldn’t we want the product owner to also work as part of a team? Could a team reduce the feedback loop durations? In Phase Gate or Other Serial Approaches… When projects use a phase gate …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 7: Collaboration Can Shorten Feedback Loops”
I just finished a series for my Pragmatic Manager newsletter about Agile Transformation Secrets: Part 1: Manage for Change Part 2: Emphasize Collaboration Part 3: Principles Over Practices I wrote this series because I find that many people get a little confused about an agile transformation. They think an agile approach will work because they …
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I’ve been pair-writing a book with Mark Kilby, From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver. We hit a big milestone today: We published the first complete draft today. We’ve been working on this book for a year. It’s much better because of our collaboration. We reflected a little on our success to …
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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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I have a new book in beta, Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver. (The in beta part means that it is in copyediting, and then onto layout and print. It’s a process.) I’m so excited about this book. My three most recent Pragmatic Manager newsletters were about jelled teams: The Case For …
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