One of my clients was trying—valiantly—to make their quarterly planning sessions work. They prepared, getting the big hotel room. They had plenty of supplies. The planning even went well. However, within two weeks, their plan had no relation to reality. That meant that for the next ten weeks, the product owners were “on their own.” […]
I’m not going to summarize each part, but to treat all of these as a whole. Let me circle back around to what HR does, as in Part 1: Administration and Benefits Compensation and rewards Education and training Recruitment Hiring If the organization wants to create an agile culture, it makes sense to change the
What can we make more “agile” in HR? Aside from an agile approach to recruiting and hiring, we can make feedback and coaching much more iterative and incremental. Add in collaborative feedback and coaching, and appreciations, and it starts to look like an agile approach to “managing performance.” Performance “Management” is Really About Power In
I see people measure all kinds of things in projects. Too often, they are single-point or single-dimension measurements. Those measurements don’t provide you with a good idea about the health of your project. They might be a start. However, they are insufficient. Imagine you, like me, would like to lose some weight. You weigh yourself
There’s a twitter discussion of what people “should” do in certain situations. One of the participants believes that people “should” want to learn on their own time and work more than 40 hours per week. I believe in learning. I don’t believe in expecting people to work more than 40 hours/week. My experience is that
As more of my clients transition to agile, many of them have a fascinating question: How do I assess who is doing what on my team? When I ask why they want to know, they say it’s all related to reviews, rewards, and general compensation. They are still discussing individual compensation, not team compensation. When
I run into clients who believe they are applying agile project management. Yet they are seeing little benefit. Why? Typically these folks try to apply agile while still using a fixed mindset. In this article, I’ll give you core practices and tips for reaping the benefits of agile. Fixed vs. Growth Mindset In agile, we
Let me guess. If you are a successful woman, in the past, you’ve been told you’re too abrasive, too direct, maybe even too assertive. Too much. See The One Word Men Never See In Their Performance Reviews. Here’s the problem. You might be. I was. But never in the “examples” my bosses provided. The “examples”
Bill popped his head into Jan’s office as he was leaving for the evening. “Jan, do you have a minute? I have to do performance reviews tonight. I was going to drink Scotch and work my way through all of them.” Jan laughed and said, “Sure. Scotch might make you feel good, but it will
Sharon poked her head into Heath’s cubicle. “Hey, Heath, are you done yet with that fix?” Heath turned around. “Sharon, you asked me that less than an hour ago. I’m not done yet.” “Well, I need to know when you will be done. Oh, and I need to know if you’re using the design we