Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
If you’re like many of the teams I meet, you’ve sort of got a handle on things. You can release. Your product mostly works. And, then Something Happens. And, your team has trouble recovering. That’s brittleness in the system. You can build resilience as a team. In this post, I’ll summarize how your team can …
When I started this series about team brittleness and resilience, I expected to discuss winter weather in the Boston area. Every year, we expect several large snowstorms. And, when it snows hard and long, we should stay off the roads so the plows can clear the snow. The organization and team I wrote about in …
Continue reading “Build Team Resilience: Work “Anywhere” and “Anytime” (Part 3)”
This series is about helping a team create a less brittle environment—more resilience. Part 1 was about individual work. This part is about shortening feedback loops. Brief description of the problem at a recent client: Person A checked in code that broke an “unrelated” part of the system. I’ll call this checking in code in …
Continue reading “Build Team Resilience: Shorten Feedback Loops (Part 2)”
I’ve been working with clients who have brittle environments. Their brittleness doesn’t show up all the time. When everything is good, they’re able to finish work and deliver. But, someone checks in code that breaks something “over there.” Or, someone gets pulled off to work on production support issues and is no longer available to …
Continue reading “Build Team Resilience: Work Together (Part 1)”
It’s time to wrap this series. I started asking if you actually need an agile approach in Part 1 and noted the 4 big problems I see. Part 2 was why we need managers in an agile transformation. Part 3 was about how people want a recipe. Part 4 was about how “Agile” is meaningless …
Continue reading “Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 5: Summary”
I started this series asking where “Agile” was headed. (I didn’t like what I saw at the Agile 2019 conference.) Part 1 was about the 4 big problems I see. Part 2 was why we need managers. Part 3 was about how people want a recipe. This part is about what “Agile” or “agile” means. …
Continue reading “Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 4: What Does “Agile” Mean?”
I started this series asking where “Agile” was headed. Part 1 was about the 4 big problems I see. Part 2 was why we need managers. This part is about how people want a recipe, The Answer, for how to get better at “Agile.” Before we can address what an answer might be, your need …
Continue reading “Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 3: What Is The Recipe, The Right Answer?”
In Part 1, I wrote about how “Agile” is not a silver bullet and is not right for every team and every product. This post is about how management fits into agile approaches. Too often, managers think “agile” is for others, specifically teams of people. Teams need to figure out how to manage their WIP, …
Continue reading “Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 2: Where Does Management Fit?”