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,
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
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
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
Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 3: Principles Over Practices If you’re trying to use agile approaches or manage an agile transformation, consider these three mindsets for you, your project, and your organization: Manage for change (Part 1) Emphasize collaboration. (Part 2) Use principles, not practices, so teams can be autonomous and deliver what they need to
Agile Transformation Secrets, Part 2: Emphasize Collaboration If you’re trying to use agile approaches or manage an agile transformation, consider these three mindsets for you, your project, and your organization: Manage for change (Part 1) Emphasize collaboration. (this part) Use principles, not practices, so teams can be autonomous and deliver what they need to deliver.
Three Secrets for Improvement by Subtraction Too often, when we change something, we add to our established practices. However, many changes succeed only when you subtract something. What will you stop? Here are three questions you might consider: Who needs information in what form? Who needs to work together? Who needs the work? Secret 1:
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
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
See Your Agile Collaboration Traps In honor of the impending Create Your Successful Agile Project book release, I decided to send you a four-part series about agile traps. Yes, one for each piece of the subtitle. This one is the collaboration trap. Here are three common collaboration traps: Your team is a component team. (The