Someone asked me again about self-assessments for their agile transition. That got me thinking about this problem of transitioning to agile. I don’t believe agile is for everyone in every circumstance. Some people claim agile has “crossed the chasm.” Certainly, many people are aware of agile. Many people understand that a cross-functional team works in […]
When I was in Brazil teaching the project portfolio workshop, one of the participants explained that his organization sometimes did a form of gold/silver/bronze comparison among the projects. Here’s how it works. Everyone wrote their project names on stickies. The first cut is everyone self-assigns their projects to Gold, Silver, Bronze categories. That’s right, everyone
I’ve been talking to a variety of potential clients about their project portfolios. One of the big problems is how to see all the work. Some of these folks have multiple kinds of projects, so they want to show their work in a variety of ways. What do you do when you have a few
I’m giving a talk at Agile 2012, entitled “How Much Will This Project Cost?” It doesn’t seem to matter what life cycle your project has, someone wants you to predict the cost. The problem is, it’s the wrong question. But, that won’t stop people from asking it anyway. People want to know the cost so
I’m speaking on July 24 for the PMI Agile community of practice, delivering a webinar at noon Eastern about Agile Project Portfolio Management. If you are a PMI member, it is free. Please do join us!
My most recent post, We Cannot Choose Between Management And Leadership, has struck a chord. That’s the good news. The bad news is I have not defined enough terms. Okay, I’ll attempt that now. And, thank you, gentle readers, for hanging in there with me, waiting for my crazy travel schedule this spring. Many Kinds
I’ve been talking to people whose management cares about their velocity. “My management wants us to double our velocity.” Or, “My management wants us to do more in a sprint.” Or, “My management wants to know when we will be a hyper-performing team, so they want to know when we will get 12x velocity like
Vol 9, #3: Always Ask the Zeroth Question About Your Projects Jan 17, 2012, ISSN: 2164-1196 Sometimes, you wonder why you are doing this project. You spend all this time on it, you’re sure there isn’t much value from the project, and still, the project is on the top of your manager’s list. There’s
I have posted last week’s Pragmatic Manager, Are You Being Guilted Into Doing More?. At Agile 2011, I had a great video conversation with Shane Hastie about agile project portfolio management. The chair is big, I’m not so short. The chair is big, I’m not so short. How many times do you think I have
Are You Being Guilted Into Doing More? Ned, a development manager I know, looked exhausted. “I’m trying to keep development going, and support pre-sales, and support post-sales, and support customer support. When is my group supposed to have time to do development??” He has a point. If his team does all the nice-guy work, they