When I started working on projects, we thought we could use a serial/waterfall approach to project management and product development. While we were wrong, one very good thing happened in the 1970s and 1980s: We took the time at the end of each phase to do a little retrospective. Yes, even for a serial approach, […]
I have never found Gantt charts to be useful. When I say that to my clients, some of them tell me they do find use in Gantt charts. Specifically, the people who like Gantt charts say they can predict where the project is headed. In addition, they can see the various interdependencies across the work.
Joanie, a new VP Engineering, joined the company a couple of weeks ago. Her boss, the CEO, wants to know how long it will take engineering to finish all the projects. Joanie asked the various leaders these questions for every project in progress: When did you start this project? Are you still working on this
Your team says they use Scrum in two-week iterations. And, in order to “finish” everything inside the timebox, you don’t do any of these things: Refactor to simplify the code or the tests. Create automated tests. Use formal acceptance criteria on a story or for the iteration or the project. That means you have work
A client wants to know how best to calculate their software capitalization. They had a “standard” approach when they used waterfall. They no longer have all waterfall projects. They’ve started to use agile approaches. And, the projects don’t all look the same. Being somewhere in the middle means they’re having trouble reasoning about capitalization. Why
Now that the election is over, we have an opportunity to reflect on some of the project management and hiring practices. I’m going to blog here and over at Hiring Technical People because the bits are just too juicy to leave untouched. If you read nothing else, read Inside Orca: How the Romney Campaign Suppressed
“Hey, Jim, guess what? I incented my agile team to work faster and harder. I told them if they doubled their velocity, I would give them a team bonus. And it worked! In just one iteration, they went from 23 points to 46 points. Is that team a great team, or what?” – a not-so-agile
I’ve been talking to people whose management cares about their velocity. “My management wants us to double our velocity.” Or, “My management wants us to do more in a sprint.” Or, “My management wants to know when we will be a hyper-performing team, so they want to know when we will get 12x velocity like
A few weeks ago, Peter Armstrong interviewed me for Leanpub, to ask me why I enjoyed writing on Leanpub. That podcast is up now on the Leanpub Frontmatter Podcast page. What’s very funny is that the interview is a few weeks old. I had no idea he was going to post it right after I
In my role as technical editor for the Agile Journal and as a reviewer for my trusted colleagues, I have the opportunity to read drafts of articles and some books. I see some troublesome behavior. I know it because I exhibit it. In all cases, the author receives feedback the author doesn’t like, but doesn’t