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 […]
Workshop: Create Your Successful Agile (& Lean) Project Workshop Workshop Objective: Learn how to deliver value as a collaborative team. You’ll use agile and lean principles, and experiment with various practices to help you find your agile approach. Workshop Overview: As you practice with your project, you’ll learn how to create your collaborative team. Then,
Standup or Handoff? You have a geographically distributed agile team. You have team members more than six hours apart. (If you’re not sure how far apart people are, take a look at Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Teams). How do you have standups that mean something, when people have completed work, can commit to work, and
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
Have you seen Esther Schindler’s great article yet? Creating High-Performance Virtual Teams of Freelancers and Contractors. Here’s the blurb: Plenty has been written about telecommuting for employees: how to encourage productivity, build a sense of “we’re all in this together,” and the logistics (such as tools and business processes) that streamline a telework lifestyle. But
At the Better Software/Agile Development conference a couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk entitled At Least Five Tips for Improving Your Geographically Distributed Agile Team. (That link goes to the slideshare.) If you look at Scott Ambler’s 2011 survey, you can see that his data matches my consulting experience. About half of all
This post is what you do when you are a program manager and not everyone knows what “agile” is, when you create a new product, when you are introducing that much cultural change? (In the program management book, I will talk more specifically about change and what to do. This post is the highlights.) Project
If you are thinking of agile as part of a program, each team has to have its own approach to agile. Why? Because each team has its own risks and problems. You don’t need to standardize agile for anyone. If you treat people as if they are adults and explain the principles that you want
What do you do for geographically distributed teams, if you want to move to agile? First question: does the team want to move to agile? Or, does the management want to move to agile? I am serious. I might take the same actions, but for different different reasons. In either case, the team needs to
The point of using agile is to get finish something valuable-to-the-business quickly, to get feedback. Why? For several reasons, but the first one is so you can change the project’s priorities. The second is so you can change the project portfolio. The third is to get feedback on what you’ve done. Okay, you can exchange