Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I recorded a Being Human podcast with Richard Atherton. It’s wide-ranging from thinking about agile approaches as a way to improve organizational flow and what that means for us as humans. I had a blast. I think Richard did, too. He’s a think-before-he-speaks person, and if you watch the video, you can see him thinking. …
Do you struggle with your agile approach? Sometimes, iterations don’t work for teams. Sometimes, flow doesn’t work. Sometimes, you need both. To celebrate the release of Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver, I am writing a series of articles on Infoq. The first article, Customize Your Agile Approach: Select Your Agile Approach That Fits …
Continue reading “Select Your Agile Approach Article Posted”
Let me summarize what I’ve been talking about in these posts. The problem I’m seeing is that too many teams and organizations plan too much in too much detail too soon. Instead of architectural BDUF (Big Design Up Front), it’s project planning as BDUF. They expect one single person (a product manager or a product …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 7, Summary”
You’ve started thinking in feature sets. Maybe you’ve experimented with rolling wave plans inside one quarter, so you can change and replan as you need to support your project or program. You’ve discussed flow-based roadmapping as a way to create MVPs and MVEs, release smaller value more often so you can make better decisions. You …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 6, Managers Want Commitments”
If you need to plan more often than once a quarter, how do you know how to replan? Instead of incurring the time and cost when you bring everyone together, consider the Product Value Team. (In past writing and presentations, I’ve called this the Product Owner Value Team. I am trying to change my term …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 5, the Product Value Team”
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.” …
In Part 1, I wrote about thinking in feature sets so everyone could see smaller chunks of work. (If you can see them, you might be able to plan for smaller and deliver smaller.) In Part 2, I suggested smaller rolling waves than an entire quarter (two months, or preferably one month) so people could …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 3, Flow-Based Roadmapping”
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 …
Continue reading “Resource Management is the Wrong Idea; Manage Your Project Portfolio Instead”
Many product owners have a tough problem. They need so many of the potential features in the roadmap, that they feel as if everything is #1 priority. They realize they can’t actually have everything as #1, and it’s quite difficult for them to rank the features. This is the same problem as ranking for the …
I’m writing part of the program management book, talking about how you need to keep everything small to maintain momentum. Sometimes, to keep your work small, teams move from iterations to flow. Here are times when you might consider moving from iteration to flow: The Product Owner wants to change the order of features in …
Continue reading “When Should You Move from Iterations to Flow?”