I had a wonderful time discussing aspects of project management with Sean Trace on his podcast. (That’s a link to the podcast.) We had a wide-ranging conversation about these topics in project management and adaptability: Overarching goals Use value as a way to gauge what to do next. Pivoting and the Sunk Cost Fallacy How […]
Many of my clients use an iteration-based agile approach. And, they have these problems: They “push” too much into an iteration. They use velocity, not cycle time to estimate. They rarely finish everything before the iteration ends. They have to manage extra work—work they had not estimated—in the form of an emergency or production support.
The more I work with project portfolio teams and program managers, the more I understand one thing: Cost accounting makes little sense in the small for agile, maybe for all knowledge work. I should say that I often see cost accounting in the form of activity-based accounting. Each function contributes to some of the cost
In Part 1, I talked about small stories/chunks of work, checking in all the time so you could build often and see progress. That assumes you know what done means. Project “done” means release criteria. Here are some stories about how I started using release criteria. Back in the 70s, I worked in a small development group.
Would you like to release your product at any time? I like it when releases are a business decision, not a result of blood, sweat, and tears. It’s possible, and it might not be easy for you. Here are some stories that showed you how I did it, long ago and more recently. Story 1: Many years
When I think of POs and the team, I think of learning in several loops: The PO learns when the team finishes small features or creates a prototype so the PO can see what the team is thinking/delivering. The team learns more about its process and what the PO wants. If the Product Manager sees
Part 1 was about how the PO needs to see the big picture and develop the ranked backlog. Part 2 was about the learning that arises from small stories. This part is about ranking. If you specify deliverables in your big picture and small picture roadmaps, you have already done a gross form of ranking. You
Part 1 was about how the PO needs to see the big picture and develop the ranked backlog. Part 2 was about the learning that arises from small stories. Part 3 was about ranking. In this part, I’ll discuss the product owner value team and how to make time to do “everything,” and especially how to change
When I work with clients, they often have a “problem” with product ownership. The product owners want tons of features, don’t want to address technical debt, and can’t quite believe how long features will take. Oh, and the POs want to change things as soon as they see them. I don’t see this as problems.To
In Part 1, I talked about the way POs think about the big picture and the ranked backlog. The way to get from the big picture to the ranked backlog is via deliverables in the form of small (user) stories. See the wikipedia page about user stories. Notice that they are a promise for a conversation.