I am thrilled to announce a book birthday: Successful Independent Consulting: Relationships That Focus on Mutual Benefit. People often ask me how long it takes me to write a book. Every book takes the time it takes. But this one took much longer than I expected. Here’s the story of the consulting book. In the […]
When I published Writing Secret 9: Keep Your Writing Clean As You Write, the feedback surprised me. Many of my fellow nonfiction writers write a lot before they get internal feedback. That might be right for them. It’s not right for me. I finally understood why I write differently. I think of each iteration as
Some writers suggest you write sloppy, “vomiting” the words onto the page. They think all writers need to start with “shitty first drafts.” But sloppy writing means you need several drafts to clean up the sloppiness. To me, that’s like waiting until the end of coding to write and run any tests at all. (Been
Twenty years ago today, I wrote my first blog post. I was nominally on vacation in Lake Tahoe, where my family was skiing. Since I’d stopped skiing by then, I used my vacations to write and read. And Esther Derby and I were writing some version of Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. We
If you, as I, write frequently, you might wonder where is the “best” place to publish your writing. You might think social media, especially Medium or LinkedIn, is the “best” in terms of eyeballs. (That’s people to the rest of us.) That’s possible the day, or maybe the week, you publish the piece. That’s because
Many agile teams and product leaders assume they can make many product decisions on their own. They do have some constraints, such as “this kind of customer” and “these kinds of problems.” However, as the teams work together and explore the product, they assume they can decide on the designs and architecture. Product leaders assume
Writers have a problem product development teams don’t have: Imposter Syndrome. That’s when you think you’re a fraud. Even though you have experience and expertise. Fear drives Imposter Syndrome. Too often, writers let the fear win. You don’t have to succumb to that fear—you can fool that fear with writing. The more you write and
Technology gets old. While we know that intellectually, we might not know it as it pertains to us. Here’s a story about how technology changes one day at a time and everything is okay—until it’s not. (Don’t want the long sad story? Go to Here’s What You Missed.) A Short History of My Site I
The larger your product, the more likely you have components teams. I often see component teams because of the architecture of the product. In this first image, the Integrated System Program, the rest of the product uses the Platform of Common Services as components. Also, the teams find it tempting to think of the common
Daniel Vacanti and Prateek Singh graciously invited* me to be on an episode of Drunk Agile: Episode 37 Johanna Rothman Part Deux More Bigger Aging. (*Invited is their term. I sent them an email, politely demanding they discuss aging. Is it possible to politely demand? I tried. Only they can tell you if I was