Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I just read Zappos is struggling with Holacracy because humans aren’t designed to operate like software. I’m not surprised. That’s because we are humans who work with other human people. I want to talk with people when I want to talk with them, not when some protocol tells me I must. It’s the same problem when …
People often ask me, “When is agile right or not right for a project?” I’ve said before that if the team wants to go agile, that’s great. If the team doesn’t, don’t use agile. That answer is insufficient. In addition to the team, we need management to not create a bad environment for agile. You …
Lisette Sutherland posted a podcast we recorded about geographically distributed agile teams. See Organize Your Distributed Team over on the CollaborationSuperpowers site. We covered how you can think about your geographically distributed agile team: Why you want a distributed agile team (yes, there are some great reasons) How you might organize your team. Here are …
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If you’re the project manager for a geographically distributed team, you have likely encountered time zone challenges in running your meetings: 7 a.m. New York time is 8 p.m. in Singapore. Meetings at these times can exhaust everyone. Here’s a common scenario faced by managers of distributed teams: “We’ll have our next standup tomorrow, same …
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In my article, Which “Scrum Master” Are You Hiring?, I suggested you articulate the type of leader you might be hiring. Why? You might not be hiring a “Scrum Master” at all—but you are likely hiring a servant leader. In this article, let’s discuss the kind of qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills you might need …
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Have you looked at some of the ads for Scrum Masters lately? Some ads include the need for PMPs or they say they will give you a bonus if you complete the project at a certain time or to someone’s satisfaction. Some talk about hiring the team or about managing the customer’s expectations. Some talk …
If you are organized as platform team, middleware, and front-end teams, you have a component team organization. That made sense at one point in your history. But if you are transitioning to agile or have transitioned, and if you want to use agile on a program, that might not make much sense now. If you …
I was problem-solving with a potential client the other day. They want to manage their project portfolio. They use Jira, so they think they can see everything everyone is doing. (I’m a little skeptical, but, okay.) They want to know how much the teams can do, so they can do capacity planning based on what …
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Workshop: Deliver What the Business Needs Using Agile and Lean Project Management Workshop Objective: After this interactive and experiential workshop, you will be able to work together as a team toward a common goal, steering toward a successful conclusion as you learn new information. You will learn how to deliver a product, using agile and/or …
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I published a Pragmatic Manager yesterday to my subscribers. Normally, I let them enjoy the pleasure of being “in-the-know” about what I have to say this month for a while before I post the emails to my site. Read the Pragmatic Manager here: Standup or Handoff. However, I made a Big Mistake in where I …
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