This is Johanna Rothman’s July 2026 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this newsletter. (Looking for the video? I post the video within a few days of publication on my YouTube channel.) Are you drowning in work? While I mostly speak with project and program managers, or “people” managers, everyone […]
This is Johanna Rothman’s April 2026 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this newsletter. During a recent conference, I was on a panel with some really smart colleagues. One of the first audience questions was, “What’s your most valuable management tool?” Some of the other panelists mentioned how they use
Early in my public speaking career, a fellow speaker asked me to sit in on his session and offer feedback afterwards. I did. And I had a very tough time staying awake. His slides were too dense, his delivery was almost a monotone, but there was a reason for that: He did not tell a
Many of my clients have large “appetites”: they want to create ambitious products with many features. Even though I recommend they start small and iterate their way to that ambitious product, these (smart people) still say they want to start with “more.” They think the team needs to see this ambitious product vision to know
I’ve been working with folks making their transition to agile. One of the hardest transitions is for the managers and technical leaders. Managers are accustomed to working in timeboxes. To them, the iteration is a timebox. But, they also are accustomed to features spanning multiple timeboxes, and that’s not OK in agile. They are accustomed
Edit Those Epics: Stories Don’t Span Iterations was posted on Techwell, the new site of Stickyminds.com. Yes, I will have to figure out how to change my tags/categories. Please do leave comments over there, I will be responding.
Here’s a list of the top ten questions interviewers ask. (How do they know??) I really like the way these questions are framed in behavior-description style. I have a nit to pick with question 2: What did you like best and least about your previous job? I don’t think that’s a question about administrative and