This is Johanna Rothman’s December 2025 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. In the first part of inviting culture change, I wrote about Stephanie, a senior leader who wants more organizational agility. She’s used the flow metrics to invite that culture change. So far, she’s succeeded with the […]
This is Johanna Rothman’s November 2025 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. I’ve been working with Stephanie, a senior leader who’s trying to nudge her organization to more organizational agility. Not because agility is so “good,” but because they want to quickly launch new products and new versions
In a recent conversation, an unemployed agile coach asked, “What’s the point of a project manager, anyway?” Here’s what effective project managers do: They create the environment for the team to succeed. Here’s how effective project managers start: If the team does not yet have a project charter with the product goal, they facilitate or
I’ve heard that the AA/PMI wants to create a manifesto for enterprise agility. I’m not sure we need a manifesto, but that’s fine. Here are the necessary conditions for enterprise agility: A culture of flow efficiency thinking. That means everyone collaborates across the organization to optimize up for one overarching goal. Limited planning horizons, with
Your managers want to measure all kinds of interesting pieces of data to run the company well. Much of that is reflected in your organization’s Profit and Loss (P&L) statement. (There’s a great site with an explanation of a P&L statement.) Notice any organization’s three big numbers: Revenue, all the operating expenses, and net earnings.
I’m stoked to be on Squirrel’s The Insanely Profitable Tech Podcast. We’ll be recording on 15 August 2024, 4:30 PM UK time. (That’s 11:30 am Eastern.) The topic: Get Budget for Anything. Yes, I suggested to Squirrel that we explore more around the topic of my recent newsletter, How to Reframe the Lack of Money
This is the July 2024 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. Years ago, as a director, my VP, Fred, told me there was no money for raises. I looked at him and asked, “Really? No raise money? Even though all the senior managers just went for
Luke Pivac, a colleague from New Zealand, interviewed me last week. Here’s the video: We discussed several topics: My recent Unemployed Agilists posts. (That link just goes to the first post) My most recent book: Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility. Luke very kindly included (automatically generated) subtitles, which
I started this series by discussing why managers didn’t perceive the value of agile coaches and Scrum Masters in Part 1, resulting in layoffs.) Then, in Part 2, I asked those unemployed agilists to review their functional skills, the skills people need to do a product development job well. While those skills are useful, they
For years, managers have been trying to find ways to make software product development faster and easier. As an industry, we’ve tried tons of things. Here are just the one I’ve experienced in the 70s, 80s, 90s: Structured Analysis and Design. (That was the precursor to Big Design Up Front.) The SEI’s Capability Maturity Model