Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I wrote about how to pick a driver in Part 1. In Part 2, I wrote about how you might finesse some of the constraints and floats if you can release frequently. What if you’re like this organization, Acme? Acme has been working towards agility for the last couple of years. However, they still have …
I spoke with a project manager recently. She told me her story. I used to facilitate project teams as a project manager. Why a project manager? Because the project had a beginning and an end. We had (and still have) too many products to keep the same teams on them for a long time. For …
Continue reading “Agile Project Manager, Scrum Master, or Product Owner?”
I spoke at Agile 2019 last week. I had both a great time and a heart-rending realization. The great time was meeting and reconnecting with people. The heart-rending realization is our industry is in big, big trouble. Here are my thoughts and where I think the “agile” industry is headed. Problems I See with “Agile” …
Continue reading “Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 1: Do You Need an Agile Approach?”
I had the chance to talk with Andy Kaufman on his podcast, Accelerating Your Agile Journey, PPP 2017. We’ve had the chance to speak informally and more formally on his podcast. This time, we had a wide-ranging discussion. We spoke about many of the ideas in Create Your Successful Agile Project: Learning early (instead of failing …
Many new-to-agile teams use some form of iteration-based agile approach. Often, in the form of Scrum. Back in Time You Spend in Agile Meetings (near the bottom of the post), I enumerated all the possible meetings. I suggested the team review its WIP limits and think about limiting the WIP for the entire team. When the …
Whenever I teach agile approaches, I discuss the possible meetings a team might choose. Some people turn to me in dismay. They start adding up all the meeting time and say, “That’s a lot of meetings.” Could be. Especially if you use iterations. You might have these meetings: A retrospective once every two weeks. A …
I delivered a webinar called Agile Metrics for Team and Product Progress last week, thanks to the nice folks at Innovation Roots. I had fun and so did many of the participants. One person gave me a new saying about metrics (at the end, during the Q&A): Are you data-driven or data-informed? It’s such a great …
Sprints, by definition, are a timebox. You’re supposed to say, “Pencils down!” at the end of the sprint, show your work and reflect. One of the big problems with new-to-agile teams is their inability to finish work inside a sprint. Each team is unique. However, I’ve seen these causes most often: Team members multitask, so …
Continue reading “When Teams Don’t Finish Work in a Sprint: 3 Tips to Seeing and Finishing Work”
Ryan Ripley interviewed me on his podcast, Agile for Humans 83 about Create Your Successful Agile Project. We had a blast. I didn’t stint on my opinions or on my experience with agile teams. One of those opinions was about teambuilding, which I wrote about in Creating an Environment of Teamwork. The other opinion (based on …
Continue reading “Discussing Teamwork and Measures on Agile for Humans”
I had a great time recording with two of the guys from the Agile Uprising Podcast. See Create Your Successful Agile Project with Johanna Rothman. We discussed the book. I had an opportunity to rant and rave about many things: agile project managers (no, the term is not an oxymoron) a little about why the …
Continue reading “Listen to the Agile Uprising Podcast with Me”