Too often, organizations want to budget for an entire year. The managers run around for two or three months in advance of that fiscal year, attempting to predict a ton of things: Estimates for not-well-defined projects or features, Capital equipment or tool needs, “Headcount” aka, people needed. Then, the organization doesn’t finalize the budget until […]
Several recent clients want help with these problems: Estimation isn’t accurate. Because the estimation isn’t accurate, management can’t predict when they can release anything. Managers can’t manage the capitalization (a way to move from expensing software to capitalizing it). Teams can’t seem to ever deliver a finished feature. The work in progress everywhere is quite large.
Three Secrets for Improvement by Subtraction Too often, when we change something, we add to our established practices. However, many changes succeed only when you subtract something. What will you stop? Here are three questions you might consider: Who needs information in what form? Who needs to work together? Who needs the work? Secret 1:
Manage “When” With a Parking Lot I’ve received several comments on the most recent Pragmatic Managers: Create Successful Schedules and Three Secrets to Creating Your Focus Time. Then, the writer asks, “What do I do when I have way too much to do?” Use a parking lot. Sometimes, I use a parking lot to kill
Three Secrets to Creating Your Focus Time I don’t like multitasking at all. And, I have many projects in progress. How is it possible to jump from one project to another—and not forget where I am? My secret is focus time—small periods of time where I focus-and-finish work. Secret 1: Write down the work you
Consultants and writers share a common problem: we are business owners. That means we manage our businesses. Yes, I manage my own product development and my business. The great Joanna Penn interviewed me and the podcast is now live: Strategy And Business Plans For Authors With Johanna Rothman. If you write and self-publish, you should listen
As I work with people to use agile approaches, I see many organizational constraints. I’ve been trying to find a visualization for what I see. I don’t know if I’ve got it yet, but here is my sum-of-the-parts image. The organization’s culture drives decisions (or not!) about the strategy. Strategy, with any luck, creates clarity
Agile approaches can help a team release more often. When a team releases more often, the product people can replan the product roadmaps. The project portfolio people can replan the project portfolio. Not every team releases often enough to take advantage of replanning small and often. Everyone falls prey to “too much” thinking. The product
Ryan Ripley interviewed me on his podcast, Agile for Humans 83 about Create Your Successful Agile Project. We had a blast. I didn’t stint on my opinions or on my experience with agile teams. One of those opinions was about teambuilding, which I wrote about in Creating an Environment of Teamwork. The other opinion (based on
Projects have problems. That’s why we select life cycles, approaches, and apply risk management as we proceed so we can manage these problems. What’s your #1 project problem? The nice folks at Mavenlink identified 5 major challenges in project management. Here are the top 3: Project plans and scheduling are not aligned (45%) Contention for