Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
Sometimes, teams have trouble releasing their work, showing the value of the work they’ve completed. There are many possible reasons for this release problem: The team doesn’t have sufficient working agreements about what “done” means. I’ve written about frictionless releasing. In Create Your Successful Agile Project, I wrote about the done, done-done, and done-done-done words we …
I was on vacation last week, thinking about value. Depending on my role, I might think of value as: Delivery of a feature or story, assuming it’s the right level of quality and when I want it. Information about the story. This might include information from the team about what they think about this story, …
Ryan Ripley interviewed me on his podcast, Agile for Humans 83 about Create Your Successful Agile Project. We had a blast. I didn’t stint on my opinions or on my experience with agile teams. One of those opinions was about teambuilding, which I wrote about in Creating an Environment of Teamwork. The other opinion (based on …
Continue reading “Discussing Teamwork and Measures on Agile for Humans”
Back in Manage It!, I suggested that for requirements, the questions should be, “How little can we do?” and still have a great product. My argument was this: the longer the project (regardless of approach), the more risk there is. Can you reduce risk by reducing the requirements? That would allow you to release earlier …
Continue reading “How Little Can You Do (& Still be Effective)”
Let me summarize what I’ve been talking about in these posts. The problem I’m seeing is that too many teams and organizations plan too much in too much detail too soon. Instead of architectural BDUF (Big Design Up Front), it’s project planning as BDUF. They expect one single person (a product manager or a product …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 7, Summary”
You’ve started thinking in feature sets. Maybe you’ve experimented with rolling wave plans inside one quarter, so you can change and replan as you need to support your project or program. You’ve discussed flow-based roadmapping as a way to create MVPs and MVEs, release smaller value more often so you can make better decisions. You …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 6, Managers Want Commitments”
If you need to plan more often than once a quarter, how do you know how to replan? Instead of incurring the time and cost when you bring everyone together, consider the Product Value Team. (In past writing and presentations, I’ve called this the Product Owner Value Team. I am trying to change my term …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 5, the Product Value Team”
One of my clients was trying—valiantly—to make their quarterly planning sessions work. They prepared, getting the big hotel room. They had plenty of supplies. The planning even went well. However, within two weeks, their plan had no relation to reality. That meant that for the next ten weeks, the product owners were “on their own.” …
In Part 1, I wrote about thinking in feature sets so everyone could see smaller chunks of work. (If you can see them, you might be able to plan for smaller and deliver smaller.) In Part 2, I suggested smaller rolling waves than an entire quarter (two months, or preferably one month) so people could …
Continue reading “Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 3, Flow-Based Roadmapping”
In Part 1, I wrote about thinking in feature sets and how to quickly create a feature set of—with any luck—smaller features. That’s because features don’t arrive at the same rate and they change in value, during a quarter. Because features change in value and because some feature sets need to deliver value on a more regular …