Does your team have a project charter so they know what to do for this project? I see too many teams try to start work without one. That leads to feature factories, apparently random work that does not add value, or worse, a product that’s partly done in too many areas. Teams start without project […]
Is your team ever surprised by how long things take? Do you hear things such as: Team members say, “I’ve been waiting for code review for more than 2 days.” (See Measure Cycle Time, Not Velocity to see the various durations for solo, cooperative, and collaborative work. Cycle time is a team-based measure of feedback
In a recent conversation, an unemployed agile coach asked, “What’s the point of a project manager, anyway?” Here’s what effective project managers do: They create the environment for the team to succeed. Here’s how effective project managers start: If the team does not yet have a project charter with the product goal, they facilitate or
I recently learned that the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada has closed all of its retail stores. This is a big deal, because they’d been in business since 1670. But it’s an even bigger deal for risk management. That’s because the Company pioneered the use of the “Hudson’s Bay Start.” That’s where they encouraged the
I’ve been working with a new-to-the-organization senior leader, Steve, who struggles with this challenge: He wants to capitalize some operational expenses. (That’s a move from OpEx to CapEx.) He is convinced that will give him some freedom to change things while everyone is still working hard. So they’ve asked all the technical people to fill
When I wrote Manage It!, I included an idea called a Hudson Bay Start. I wrote an article about that later, in How to Use Iteration Zero—Or Not. Hudson Bay Starts are not a new idea. However, you might not know what they are. Here’s the idea: the team chooses one item from their backlog.
This is the December 2024 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. I have the same problems as many of you do: I start something and then I realize it’s much larger than I expected. That occurred with this month’s newsletter. The problem I tried to
In my work with project and program managers (see all the various titles below), I always recommend they clarify their project or program boundaries: drivers, constraints, and floats when they start the effort. But in a recent coaching call, I realized there’s another question I use a lot, especially with sponsors: When do you want
When Mark, my husband, and I moved into this house a decade ago, we faced the problem many other people face: what to keep and what to toss (or recycle, etc.). Mark had a particularly difficult time with the kitchen drawer that held all the old baby dishes and utensils. I wanted to toss everything
I have never found Gantt charts to be useful. When I say that to my clients, some of them tell me they do find use in Gantt charts. Specifically, the people who like Gantt charts say they can predict where the project is headed. In addition, they can see the various interdependencies across the work.