Several of my clients are trying to do the impossible right now—plan their portfolio for an entire year. Or plan their product backlogs for eighteen months or longer. When I ask them how well that’s worked for them in the past, they often say, “Our planning works great. Our execution? Not so well.” That’s my […]
In How Centralization Decisions Create Friction, Increase Cycle Time, and Cost Money, Part 1, I discussed how removing support staff for departments and managers created longer cycle times. (And sometimes, increased friction so much that people could not easily do their jobs.) Removing those support staff was one indication the companies fell into the Economies
Many of my middle-management and senior leadership clients want certainty about future work. That’s one of the reasons they create huge backlogs and long roadmaps. Yet, even those backlogs and roadmaps don’t offer certainty. One of these managers said, “I have so much uncertainty and ambiguity. I feel as if I can’t make a good,
Several of my trusted advisor clients have asked this question, “Why do I need to choose between effectiveness and efficiency? Why can’t I have both?” A great question. I recommend they start with effectiveness. That occurs when they say yes to just the work they need now, to reduce the organizational WIP. Start with managing
The experiment continues. My weekly 60 seconds of some writing in progress (WIP). This one is from a short story. The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of Johanna’s WIP for October 12, 2023, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This excerpt is from
My weekly 60 seconds of WIP: This one is also from the project lifecycles book. The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of WIP for October 5, 2023, where I read an excerpt that I hope is just a minute of some book in progress. This excerpt is from the currently-named Project
Several people on LinkedIn commented on my post, Want Better and Faster Results? Increase Team Size and Reduce WIP. They wondered if adding more people to a small team would violate Brooks’ Law. As with all good questions, the answer is “It depends.” It depends on how your lifecycle manages feedback loops and learning, how
I’m experimenting with audio and video. So I started a podcast called, “60 Seconds of Johanna’s WIP.” Listen here: If you want to listen through your podcast app, go to 60 Seconds of Johanna’s WIP September 29, 2023. I will also add those videos to my YouTube channel. The plan—and I use that term quite
For years, I’ve advocated relatively small teams. Why? Small teams can more easily learn—faster and together. All because they have fewer communication paths. I was only partially right. Smaller teams tend to have lower WIP (Work in Progress). Even if a 5 to 7-person team falls into the Everyone Starts Their Own Story trap (see
Susan, a senior leader of a 300-person department, wanted to reduce the risks of late deliveries, and respond to customers faster. Susan suspected the managers and teams were too wedded to their plans and not experimenting enough. That meant she needed an agile approach. But while she had been a part of several supposedly agile