Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I’m giving at a talk at the Sept 19 Yahoo! Program Management Council, Managing for Collaboration. You might think this is a bit of an oxymoron: Managing for collaboration? But when you have programs, collections of projects where the business value is in the deliverable that the collection brings, you have to manage, influence, and …
Continue reading “Speaking at Sept 19 Yahoo! Program Management Council”
Sophie strode down the hall to Randy’s office. “Randy, what is this?” she asked as she waved a sheaf of papers. Randy looked up and said, “I have no idea. What are you waving around?” “Your plans for your group!” “Oh, my predicted project portfolio for the next six months?” “Yes! When were you going …
Continue reading “Working Together–Not Just Working Together”
Summary: If you’ve been tasked with creating an agile team, first consider what differentiates an agile team from a non-agile team. In this week’s column, Johanna Rothman highlights six behaviors of people on successful agile teams that candidates for an agile team should possess. Are agile team members different from people on other teams? Yes …
Continue reading “Six Behaviors to Consider for an Agile Team”
I’m in Albuquerque this week at a debriefing workshop. When I teach, I don’t just read PowerPoint slides. I do use handouts (and frequently PPT) to guide what I’m going to say. However, I add lots of stories, and use interactive activities to drive specific points home to the workshop participants. The way to extract …
“I need another tester for my team” – Test Manager “I’m looking for a developer/architect/someone senior for my team” – Development manager Two managers, two teams. Although each manager has a group he calls a team, the teams are quite different. The test manager has a pool of people whom he assigns to projects in …
I maintain the AYE web site as part of my responsibilities this year for the conference. I post the news, the new articles, and do the general updating. Monday, I posted one of Don Gray‘s articles, Shifting the Burden – Whose Monkey Is It? Except, Don and I had both made a mistake. Don …
I’m in lovely Perth, Australia this weekend, staying with some friends of mine. The husband was explaining how he makes sure his department buys coffee, tea, milk, sugar for everyone in the department. “It costs us about $2000 to supply the department for a year. In return, people congregate around the coffee, discussing work. …
The two articles I found most telling about Carly Fiorina’s departure from HP are Worst. CEO. Ever. and Carly Fiorina and management. High tech organizations require a vision (from the CEO), a budget, and room for innovation. Maybe I missed it, but Fiorina didn’t provide any vision, except for cost-cutting. When will senior managers …
In a question to yesterday’s post, Bill asked about the effect of multiple ideas for problem solving: “Do readers feel they have to follow one of your multiple True Ways now? Or does the multiplicity meta-message encourage them to generate even more ideas?” Sometimes and Yes. Some people are even more impatient than I …
Continue reading “Effective Problem Solving and Solution Communication”
I’ve been thinking a lot about some of my clients’ problems managing their projects. Two of my clients are stuck on the notion that there is a silver bullet, one right way to solve their problem. Then I read Steve Norrie’s blog entry this morning, and saw this quote: “Nothing is more dangerous than …