Create Your Successful Agile Project

MPD, risk

A Little Scree About AI and the Hard Parts of Product Development

There’s all kinds of hype every single day about AI taking the place of programmers. That reasoning infers that typing is the hard part of product development. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here are the hard parts of product development: Understanding what the customers want. Often, the customers don’t know until they see […]

MPD, risk

How We Can Use the Hudson’s Bay Company Risk Management Now

I recently learned that the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada has closed all of its retail stores. This is a big deal, because they’d been in business since 1670. But it’s an even bigger deal for risk management. That’s because the Company pioneered the use of the “Hudson’s Bay Start.” That’s where they encouraged the

newsletter

How to Use Delivery to Move from Blame to Trust

This is the April 2025 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.Early in the agile community, people referred to the Product Owner as the “single wringable neck.” Somehow, if the product owner didn’t define the stories well, or create acceptance criteria, or even represent what someone

MPD, project management

How Activity-Based Plans Differ from Deliverable-Based Plans

In a recent conversation, I realized that very smart and experienced project managers do not always know the difference between activity-based plans and deliverable-based plans. While activities might result in an interim or internal deliverable, activities do not result in a user-focused deliverable. The team might make some progress, but not progress users can see.

newsletter

How to Predict A Little About the Future Work Without Long Intricate Plans

Susan, an experienced senior leader, wondered what to do. Her company’s market was on a roller coaster. Increased revenue meant a lot more customers, who clamored for more features. So, the product leaders pressured the teams to deliver faster.​ But she’d been in a roller coaster situation before. After two years of stupendous growth, revenue leveled off in just one

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