If you have to make a decision, how fast can you make it? There is certainly a range of decision times. Some decisions require almost immediate decisions. Others can take a while. But no decision can take what seems like forever. In effect, waiting to make a decision is no decision. No decision is still
A twitter follower asked if I could provide a link to a “discussion of tactical vs strategic planning/projects?” Here you go: Strategic work is a management role. It involves setting the direction for the organization (or group), deciding what to do and what not to do, who to hire and when. If it involves committing
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
The December Harvard Business Review has an article, Is the Rookie Ready? (You have to subscribe and pay to read the whole thing.) The story is this: Kristen is the new project manager, reporting to Tim. The old PM left because Tim, who’d been her manager for 6 months didn’t know how to work with
Dave and Bob have great comments on my post, Might Three Backlogs Be Better Than One?. Dave is describing situations where management is making reasonable decisions, not incurring management debt, and by extension, technical debt. Bob and I have experience with significant management debt. (Take a look at Musings About Management Debt for more information
I’m editing the project portfolio book. Yes, I’m trying to get ready for beta. No, I have no idea when I will be ready. I’ll have more information before Wednesday, if you want to know. I realized that when managers don’t make ranking decisions about the project portfolio, when they don’t fully commit to a
Part of my consulting practice is to perform assessments. Sometimes, those assessments discover misalignments between IT and the business. Misalignments show up as “problem” projects, “inadequate” testing, and other typical problems in IT. It turns out, though, that many IT misalignment problems can be solved by small changes in IT work processes. With 10 years