As I finish the agile project management book (Create Your Successful Agile Project), I am working on what stays in this book and what I use in the agile management book (next up after the PO book). That leads me to this question: What do you call a transition to agile approaches? Is there a […]
Have you ever worked on a project where the management and/or sponsors felt it necessary to provide you warnings: “This release better do this or have that. Otherwise, you’re toast.” I have, once. That’s when I started to use release criteria and check with the sponsors/management to make sure they agreed. I happen to like
Many people use an iteration approach to agile. They decide on an iteration duration, commit to work for that iteration and by definition, they are done at the end of the timebox. I like timeboxing many things. I like timeboxing work I don’t know how to start. I find short timeboxes help me focus on the
Culture is a combination of three things: how people treat each other, what people can discuss, and what the organization rewards. Team 1 has a project manager who believes in collaboration. She encourages people to move work across the board, regardless of how many people it takes to finish a story. The team members joke
I had a conversation with Amitai Schleier last year. I told him how much I enjoyed Agile in 3 Minutes (the podcast). I learned something from each podcast. He invited me to contribute one. Naturally, I chose management. My podcast, 34: Manage is up. If you like the podcast, you should check out the book, too. See
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke locally about Manage Your Project Portfolio. Part of the talk is about understanding when you need project portfolio management and flowing work through teams. One of the (very sharp) fellows in the audience asked this question: As you grow, don’t you need component teams? I thought that was
I’m doing a Twitter chat November 3 at 4pm Eastern/8pm UK with David Daly. David posted the video of our conversation as prep for the Twitter chat. Today he tweeted this: “How do you optimize for features? That’s flow efficiency.” Yes, I said that. There were several Twitter rants about the use of the word
People often ask me, “When is agile right or not right for a project?” I’ve said before that if the team wants to go agile, that’s great. If the team doesn’t, don’t use agile. That answer is insufficient. In addition to the team, we need management to not create a bad environment for agile. You
Is your agile transition proceeding well? Or, is it stuck in places—maybe the teams aren’t improving, maybe the people are multitasking, maybe you are tired and don’t know how you’ll find the energy to continue. You are the kind of person who would benefit from the Influential Agile Leader workshop. Gil Broza and I co-facilitate.
Productive Vs. Busy I received some fascinating responses to Do You Want More Productivity? One correspondent told me that managers need to move people—especially testers—from one project where they are not busy to another project where they could help. His experience matches mine—many projects do not have enough testers. However, we do not share the