Culture, Demo, Efficiency and Productivity - Management Consulting Connection

Effective Agility Requires Cultural Changes: Part 1

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 10, 2024

When I work with these teams or their managers, I realize they're not demoing or retrospecting on a regular basis. That creates distrust and an anti-agile culture. Worse, these people and teams don't feel any satisfaction with their products. That's a cultural change. That's why I say agility requires cultural changes.

Agile

Agile Culture Efficiency Management

How to Create Partnerships Instead of Using Stakeholders

Johanna Rothman

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Strategy and Product Feedback Loops About 20 years ago, I taught a project management workshop to IT people. Their products and services did not ship outside the building—their products and services enabled the organization to make money. See Customers, Internal Delivery, And Trust for a recent post about demos and trust.)

How To

How To Efficiency Meeting Productivity

Designing an Organization for a Product Approach, Part 2

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 28, 2018

In this part, I’ll discuss an option for a product-oriented organization. Consider a Product-Oriented Organization. Instead of organizing by function, consider a product-oriented organization. Again, I am not saying this is the only way a product organization would look, but this is a possibility. What do you do?

Productivity

Productivity Agile Efficiency Management

Five Tips for Managers of Newly Dispersed Teams

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 30, 2020

If you're creating products of any kind—especially software products—you've got a team sport. Successful software product development is about how well the team learns together. The better the team learns together, the better the product is. See the Flow Efficiency series.) Tip 3: Reduce the Team's WIP.

Management

Management Agile Metrics Video

How WIP Insights Allow Us to Revisit Brooks’ Law About Adding People to a Team

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 2, 2023

The first is that Brooks strongly suggested the idea of a “surgical team” That hierarchical team was a feature- or product-based team. Ten people, seven of them professionals, are at work on the problem, but the system is the product of one mind–or at most two, acting uno animo.”

Agile

Agile Analysis Management Productivity

Five Tips for Managers of Newly Dispersed Teams

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 30, 2020

If you're creating products of any kind—especially software products—you've got a team sport. Successful software product development is about how well the team learns together. The better the team learns together, the better the product is. See the Flow Efficiency series.) Tip 3: Reduce the Team's WIP.

Management

Management Agile Metrics Video

Retire These Metaphors & Reframe the Discussion to be More Effective

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 24, 2023

For years, we've used several metaphors to describe software product development: People-based metaphors, such as: Man-weeks for all the humans working on a project or a product. Demo inside the organization. In product development, is it anyone's job to make a baby at work? Yes, those people might also plan together.

Construction

Construction Resources Productivity Development

What Lifecycle or Agile Approach Fits Your Context? Part 6, Create Your Agile Approach

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 20, 2020

Because your context is unique to you, your team, project, product, and culture. And, with any luck, nudges the culture in a good direction for your team, project, and product. Why Do You Want an Agile Culture for Your Product? Notice I said the culture is for this particular product.

Agile

Agile Culture Productivity Development

Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 5: Summary

Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 21, 2019

This post is about what you can do to create an agile culture, regardless of where you are in the organization. BTW: One more thing about an agile culture: Many of the people I spoke with at the conference are convinced they need to “scale.” And, they change the culture to one that supports agile approaches.

Agile

Agile Efficiency Culture Guidelines

How Interview Questions Reveal the True Organizational Assumptions & Culture, Part 5

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

I started this series with many specific concerns about a particular interview question: “The product owner and dev team cannot decide on a sprint goal, even after hours of discussion. Instead, I see assumptions that reveal a divide-and-conquer, and possibly a command-and-control culture, not an agile culture. Not one person.

Interviews

Interviews Culture Agile Efficiency

Effective Agility: Three Ways to Change Your Team’s Project Culture, Part 3

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 6, 2024

In Effective Agility Requires Cultural Changes: Part 1 , I said that real agile approaches require cultural change to focus on flow efficiency , where we watch the flow of the work , not the people doing tasks. What about those cultural changes? Where the organization rewards resource efficiency, not flow efficiency.)

Agile

Agile Culture Efficiency Metrics

Effective Agility: Three Suggestions to Change How You and Your Team Work, Part 2

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 31, 2024

In Effective Agility Requires Cultural Changes: Part 1 , I said that real agile approaches require cultural change to focus on flow efficiency, where we focus on watching the work, not the people. The goal to release the product. If you can demo something valuable every day, no one will ask for an estimate or prediction.

Agile

Agile Metrics Efficiency Culture

With Agile Approaches, No Need to “Meet” or “Enforce” Deadlines

Johanna Rothman

JUNE 24, 2021

I asked Brad these questions: Do you have product or feature teams that are cross-functional and can release alone? ( Component teams create interdependencies and take much more time to finish work.). Does each team focus on just one product at a time? Schedule Variance Does Not Make Sense for Software Products.

Agile

Agile Meeting Software Government

Want Better and Faster Results? Increase Team Size and Reduce WIP

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Some of the dysfunction was due to the culture, which discouraged collaboration. The previous manager had focused on resource efficiency, not flow efficiency , so everyone had “their” own work. That's when the culture of experience spat in my face. Then, senior management offered kudos when we showed a demo.

Agile

Agile Culture Efficiency Development

Management Consulting Connection

Effective Agility Requires Cultural Changes: Part 1

How to Create Partnerships Instead of Using Stakeholders

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Designing an Organization for a Product Approach, Part 2

Five Tips for Managers of Newly Dispersed Teams

How WIP Insights Allow Us to Revisit Brooks’ Law About Adding People to a Team

Five Tips for Managers of Newly Dispersed Teams

Retire These Metaphors & Reframe the Discussion to be More Effective

What Lifecycle or Agile Approach Fits Your Context? Part 6, Create Your Agile Approach

Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 5: Summary

How Interview Questions Reveal the True Organizational Assumptions & Culture, Part 5

Effective Agility: Three Ways to Change Your Team’s Project Culture, Part 3

Effective Agility: Three Suggestions to Change How You and Your Team Work, Part 2

With Agile Approaches, No Need to “Meet” or “Enforce” Deadlines

Want Better and Faster Results? Increase Team Size and Reduce WIP

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