I’m stoked to be on Squirrel’s The Insanely Profitable Tech Podcast. We’ll be recording on 15 August 2024, 4:30 PM UK time. (That’s 11:30 am Eastern.) The topic: Get Budget for Anything. Yes, I suggested to Squirrel that we explore more around the topic of my recent newsletter, How to Reframe the Lack of Money […]
This is the July 2024 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. Years ago, as a director, my VP, Fred, told me there was no money for raises. I looked at him and asked, “Really? No raise money? Even though all the senior managers just went for
I’ve seen a number of posts recently saying that micromanagement isn’t as bad as we might think it is. Instead, micromanagement might actually help the person who’s the subject of that micromanagement. Sorry, no. Well, not sorry at all. Still No. Heck, NO. NO to all micromanagement. If any manager has micromanaged you, you know
Susan, an experienced senior leader, wondered what to do. Her company’s market was on a roller coaster. Increased revenue meant a lot more customers, who clamored for more features. So, the product leaders pressured the teams to deliver faster. But she’d been in a roller coaster situation before. After two years of stupendous growth, revenue leveled off in just one
I continue to work with people who have trouble with their agile approach. They tell me their relative estimation isn’t working for them. They continue to roll over items, from sprint to sprint. They’ve rolled over some items for six months or longer. The people feel demoralized. And the Scrum Masters or agile project managers
I had a chance to speak with Tobias Schlottke on his Alphalist podcast: Episode 92: Johanna Rothman The Pragmatic Manager. We had a wide-ranging conversation, mostly about management. We included topics from my programming experience, why multitasking is a disaster, and how to use flow metrics to understand reality. We also touched on many of
Several of my clients are trying to do the impossible right now—plan their portfolio for an entire year. Or plan their product backlogs for eighteen months or longer. When I ask them how well that’s worked for them in the past, they often say, “Our planning works great. Our execution? Not so well.” That’s my
In How Centralization Decisions Create Friction, Increase Cycle Time, and Cost Money, Part 1, I discussed how removing support staff for departments and managers created longer cycle times. (And sometimes, increased friction so much that people could not easily do their jobs.) Removing those support staff was one indication the companies fell into the Economies
Some company is buying your company (or vice versa). Why? They claim it’s “Economies of scale,” and the combined organization will save money by centralizing “overhead” and flattening management. You know who that “overhead” is: the people who support the business, such as finance and HR. And, the managers. Worse, the new management asks managers
Many of my middle-management and senior leadership clients want certainty about future work. That’s one of the reasons they create huge backlogs and long roadmaps. Yet, even those backlogs and roadmaps don’t offer certainty. One of these managers said, “I have so much uncertainty and ambiguity. I feel as if I can’t make a good,