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 […]
New Year’s Tips for 2017 Other people like to help you plan for resolutions. Well, I’m a bit contrary. I don’t buy this resolution business. I never succeed. (I’m not alone in that.) On the other hand, I like to integrate tips for my next year from my learnings from the previous year. I’ve been
I’m doing a Twitter chat November 3 at 4pm Eastern/8pm UK with David Daly. David posted the video of our conversation as prep for the Twitter chat. Today he tweeted this: “How do you optimize for features? That’s flow efficiency.” Yes, I said that. There were several Twitter rants about the use of the word
In What Agile Project Managers Do, Part 1, I described what facilitative agile project managers do. In What Agile Project Managers Do Not Do, Part 2, I described a number of roles a more traditional project manager might think is their job still, even if they are supposed to be/use agile. Sometimes, people get confused with
In What Agile Project Managers Do, Part 1, I spoke about what agile project managers might do. Here’s what agile project managers do not do: The agile project manager does not assign work. The agile project manager does not estimate work on behalf of the team. The agile project manager does not commit to features,
One of the questions I hear all the time with people transitioning to using agile is this: How do we organize the project if we don’t have a project manager? If you read Manage It!, you know I don’t buy the idea of a controlling project manager. But a facilitative project manager? Oh my. That
I had the chance to teach agile ideas to some project portfolio managers, or people who were considering setting up a PMO to manage the project portfolio. Many of these folks had a real concern: how to manage “resources.” (People to you and me.) Part of what I said to them was that resource management
3 Quick Project Portfolio Tips The second edition of Manage Your Project Portfolio is available now, in ebook and paper. I’m so excited. To celebrate, here are three tips to help you manage your project portfolio. Tip 1. Make your work visible. When I lead workshops to help people understand how to manage their project
Productive Vs. Busy I received some fascinating responses to Do You Want More Productivity? One correspondent told me that managers need to move people—especially testers—from one project where they are not busy to another project where they could help. His experience matches mine—many projects do not have enough testers. However, we do not share the
Do You Want More Productivity? A senior manager asked me, “How do I get more productivity out of my people? We have cross-functional teams. Each team has their expertise. I just feel as if the teams could do more.” I asked, “What kind of expertise? Is it expertise as a team or are people experts