A potential client called me. “What’s a good tool to see the state of my projects? I need a tool.” I asked, “What problems do you see?” “Everything is late. No one’s synchronized. I can’t tell where the projects are.” “How many projects do you have in progress?” “At least 100.” (I was pretty sure
I listened to The Ultimate Metric: Identifying the Right Problems to Solve. The guest, Janelle Klein, said: Technical debt is not a loan I thought that was brilliant. She went on to explain that when we talk about “debt” managers think they have dials to manage the debt. Uh oh. Wrong. When managers think in
Years ago, Roy Osherove interviewed me about project management, agile thinking, hiring, and management. We had a great conversation. (See Roy’s Archived Interviews page for my interviews with him.) I just listened to some of the questions and answers. If you are not sure about effective management, listen to the interviews. After a nudge from
Consultants who make money speak at conferences. I love to speak. Give me a microphone—I am a happy person. I keep having to turn down speaking requests, both domestic and overseas. I would love to go, to learn and to meet people. Sometimes, I’m not available. More often, I can’t “afford” to do so. Often,
I’ve been working with several managers at organizations large and small, who want to capitalize their software “earlier.” These managers have some strongly-held beliefs about the people: People are resources Resources can multitask on several projects at a time If “headquarters” does the difficult work, you can move the “grunt” work to lower wage areas
The nice folks at Planisware organized a webinar with me, called Scaling Agile. They recorded that, and you can hear the video here: Scaling Agile with Johanna Rothman. We spoke a lot about Agile and Lean Program Management. I referred to my multiple part series about Defining “Scaling” Agile. If you are thinking about “scaling”
I keep hearing about the “Skills gap.” There is no skills gap. There is a gap between what employers want to pay and what people are willing to work for. I read an article this morning that prompted this post: Talk of a skills gap in the labor market is ‘an incredible cop out’ Let
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
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
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke locally about Manage Your Project Portfolio. Part of the talk is about understanding when you need project portfolio management and flowing work through teams. One of the (very sharp) fellows in the audience asked this question: As you grow, don’t you need component teams? I thought that was