I’ve been working with several management teams who want me to train them or their project managers to take over the agile training. It’s not unreasonable from their perspective—it’s how they’ve transitioned to all the other process improvement approaches over the years. Except, none of the other process improvement approaches have been built on the […]
Solve Problems With the Rule of Three You may have noticed in these Pragmatic Manager emails that I articulate a problem I’ve seen and then offer you a minimum of three potential reasonable solutions. Sometimes, I even offer four solutions. That’s because I use the Rule of Three to help develop these solutions—and it works.
I have a new column up on Stickyminds, called How Do We Compare? Years ago, people used to ask me about the ratio of developers to testers. Now they ask me about how agile they are. That’s almost always a sign they aren’t agile enough for what they need. I hope you read and comment.
I read Putting Women First, and thought I would relate an anecdote from earlier in my career. I had just discovered, as in that morning, that I was pregnant. I hadn’t been feeling well, and was wondering why I was nauseous all the time. And where the heck was my period? I got an early
I wrote an article for Cutter IT Journal, called “Agile Managers: The Essence of Leadership.” Cutter has made the entire issue available for free (registration required). See here. If you have comments, please leave them here. I will be posting the article at some point, but not too soon.
As organizations have transitioned to agile projects and programs, what happens to the managers? Do we need managers any more? If so, what good would they do? Yes, we need managers. And in a truly agile organization, where the managers are freed from the day-to-day tactical project tasks, we need them more than ever as
Summary: As a lead and manager, your job to remove obstacles that impede work is most important. But of all the obstacles you find, whether they be people’s perceptions, bottlenecks in the work flow, or an ill-fitted chair or desk, which do you tackle first? Johanna Rothman has cleared countless of obstacles for numerous teams.
I can’t tell if this is a compliment or not, but David Anderson is already disappointed with the Agile 2009 program. Since we haven’t even opened the submission system yet, never mind chosen the program, I’m surprised. What David is reacting to is my organization of the program committee. (The potential compliment is that David
I spoke with a program manager who’d been displaced from his program because he doesn’t scream or yell at people. (No, I’m not making this up. This is true.) He’s an effective program manager, because he doesn’t tell people to do this or that task. Instead, he tells them the goal and the results he’s
In one of the comments, for When is a Scrum Master (or a PM) Not?, Craig Brown said Process, process, process. What about people? At the end of the day the process is just one of several enabers (alongside culture, technology and tools, etc.) Won’t an experienced and talented team just deliver regardless of the