Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
It seems as if the larger the agile program, the bigger the planning. Many organizations try to plan for an entire quarter at a time. They bring everyone on the program together in a large room (often a hotel ballroom) and attempt to plan the next quarter’s work. That kind of planning works for some …
Continue reading “Continuous Agile Program Planning: Think Big, Plan Small”
I don’t know if you retrospect on a regular basis. I do. (I know, you are so surprised!) Andy Kaufman asked me to share my biggest learning for his podcast. Take a listen to The Most Important Lesson You Learned Last Year. I’m pleased and proud to be in such good company. Thanks, Andy!
In Part 1, I discussed the agile project system. In Part 2, I discussed the tester’s job in agile. In Part 3, I discussed expectations about documentation (which is what the original question was on Twitter). In this part, I’ll talk about how you “measure” testers. I see a ton of strange measurement when it …
In Part 1, I discussed how an agile approach changes testing. In Part 2, I discussed how the testers’ job changes. In this part, I’ll talk about expectations. Since the developers and testers partner in agile, the testers describe their approach to testing as they work with developers on the code. (This is the same …
Last week, I attempted to have a Twitter conversation about agile and testing. I became frustrated because I need more than 140 characters to explain. This is my general agile picture. For those of you can’t see what I’m thinking, the idea is that a responsible person (often called a Product Owner) gathers the requirements …
In Part 1, I discussed the project system of agile. In this part, I’ll discuss the need for testing documentation. In a waterfall or phase-gate life cycle, we needed documentation because we might have had test developers and test executors. In addition, we might have had a long time separating the planning from the testing. …
If you’ve read Reasons for Continuous Planning, you might be wondering, “How can we do this?” Here are some ideas. You have a couple of preconditions: The teams get to done on features often. I like small stories that the team can finish in a day or so. The teams continuously integrate their features. Frequent features …
I’m working on the program management book, specifically on the release planning chapter. One of the problems I see in programs is that the organization/senior management/product manager wants a “commitment” for an entire quarter. Since they think in quarter-long roadmaps, that’s not unreasonable—from their perspective. There is a problem with commitments and the need for …
With a little common sense and some dependable metrics, you can banish the “bug bucket” and keep the dreaded rework monster under control by creating a reasonable prediction of your project’s end. A reader recently asked me, “When planning a project phase, how do you account for the bugs that you know will be created? …