Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
Steve, a software development manager, thought John was a “10x” developer. He explained that John could: Coded faster than anyone else. Write and release full applications over a weekend. “Mind-meld” with the users. No one else in Steve’s group could do this. Was I willing to support and coach the other people in Steve’s group …
Continue reading “Why Very Few (If Any) People Are “10x” Developers—Or Managers”
One of my reviewers for the Modern Management Made Easy books asked a fascinating question: I’ve never seen this many women in management or in senior leadership positions. Do these stories reflect your experience? Yes, the stories reflect my experience. Let me offer a little history. My History, Not Anyone Else’s History I started to …
Everyone feels the pressure right now. Many managers feel pressure to deliver more and better products and services. That pressure rolls downhill to the people doing the work. And, the people doing the work, especially if they’re parents? Well, they clearly made the wrong choice to bring children into the world in the last eight …
Continue reading “Managers: Make Work Easier for Working Mothers”
We hear about agile teams, in the form of product or feature teams. However, too many managers still work independently. That’s a problem when the teams have organizational problems a single manager can’t solve. Instead of managers working alone, what if we had teams of managers? A client, Bob, had that very problem. He said, …
My agile transformation clients struggle with this big question: How do we effectively reward managers? The more the organization wants or needs an agile transformation, the less the current reward structure works. How do you incent the managers? What makes sense for management compensation? Cindy, a director in a 500-person IT organization struggles with this—for …
Continue reading “Management Rewards: Doing Work vs Creating an Environment”
Some organizations find OKRs help them create superior objectives and achieve some of them. (OKRs are Objectives and Key Results.) The idea is that every quarter you use the company purpose to create audacious Objectives. Each objective then has 3-5 Key Results so you can measure how well you do. You’re not supposed to achieve …
I wrote Unearthing Your Project’s Delays a couple of years ago. I told the story of Cliff, a manager who wanted to understand why the projects were so late. I gave several talks about that article. One eagle-eyed fellow asked me this question, “How long was the time from T0 to T1?” I said, “Managers …
As I complete the Modern Management Made Easy books, I realize I need to explain how much tolerance an organization has for experiments. The more clients I have, the more I realize most organizations have a sweet spot for how much they can tolerate experiments or bets. Each person has an affinity for more or …
Continue reading “What’s Your Organization’s Tolerance for Experiments?”
Several weeks ago, I posted my innovation principles, based on Modern Management Made Easy, book 3. I developed them because I was discovering the user journey through the book. I needed a way to link the ideas together. Of course, I also created principles for managing yourself (Book 1) and for leading and serving others …
Continue reading “Modern Management Made Easy Principles—Again”
In a conversation about product quality, the product owner said, “If the testers found the problems faster, we would be done faster.” The tester said, “If the developers didn’t put so many problems in, we’d be done by now.” The developer said, “If you didn’t pressure me so much, I could have done a better …
Continue reading “Managers Make the Real Product Quality Decisions”