Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 2, 2023

” It depends on how your lifecycle manages feedback loops and learning, how collaborative the team is, and how much WIP the team has. Each Lifecycle Manages Feedback Loops Differently Brooks wrote the original version of The Mythical Man-Month in 1975, based on the 1960s IBM 360 project. What does management choose to do?

Agile 94

Agile Analysis Management Productivity 94

Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 28, 2019

And, someone on your team keeps a Gantt chart because a manager wants to see the team's progress in a form they feel comfortable with. If you're in this pickle, your manager might think your agile team doesn't replan very often. That manager might assume your team uses an agile approach only as a way to deliver.

Data 68

Data Agile Culture Management 68

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 12, 2020

Once the team completes that highest priority feature(s), the team can release the product. When we release, we can regroup and figure out what to do next for this product. Fork another product. (I I did this with several Lite vs Pro products using this approach.). See and demo the product as it grows.

Agile 112

Agile Productivity Management Development 112

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. The first time a manager asked me how many man-weeks my work would take, I said, “Zero. Demo inside the organization.

Construction 78

Construction Resources Productivity Development 78

Johanna Rothman

JUNE 17, 2021

” When we have insufficient trust, morale and the products deteriorate. Instead, we can extend trust and keep innovating for morale and the products. This image shows a 6-person team where the leader/manager micromanages. Some managers want to stay “relevant,” so they work on the technical work.

Leadership 75

Leadership Agile Management Training 75

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 60

Agile Culture Productivity Development 60

Johanna Rothman

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Your customers can't take your product more often than once or twice a year. Because the product doesn't need to leave the building, the teams don't release internally. Nor do the teams demo on a regular basis. What if we thought of all these people as customers: The various people who buy the product. Colleagues?).

Agile 58

Agile Productivity Retail Management 58

Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 21, 2019

Part 2 was why we need managers in an agile transformation. 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.”

Agile 65

Agile Culture Efficiency Guidelines 65

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. They (the team) feel that the tasks for the sprint are too varied to manage to a single sprint goal. And these managers have not read the Scrum Guide.

Interviews 95

Interviews Culture Agile Efficiency 95

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? Let's start with risks and how feedback loops manage those risks.

Agile 81

Agile Culture Efficiency Metrics 81

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. When the team can focus on the product, as a cross-functional team, they can create some agility.

Agile 70

Agile Metrics Efficiency Culture 70

Johanna Rothman

JULY 29, 2021

Several of my clients have internal struggles about how to internally see the future of the product. The managers want rigid roadmaps. Because the managers want to “know” the teams will deliver it all. However, the managers create a roadmap similar to the image above. Demo on a regular cadence.

Agile 143

Agile Productivity Data Management 143

Johanna Rothman

JUNE 24, 2021

I suspected I would learn about engagement with my next questions about management patterns. Management Patterns That Might Cause a Team to Miss “Deadlines” I find two general buckets of problems for missing deadlines: how management organizes teams and the “need” for certain measures.

Agile 85

Agile Meeting Software Government 85

Harvard Business

OCTOBER 20, 2016

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter-to-quarter or even year-to year-revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Projects not directly related to those activities never got serious resource or management attention. They are hard to do in a company that excels at products. The result?

Operations 28

Operations Productivity Software Talent 28

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 8, 2020

The spiral model assumes that if you get feedback early enough, you've managed the technical and requirements risks. I had to explain to my managers how the project would work. My managers were smart but didn't understand how to spiral time. Once our customers saw demos, they wanted to change things. Manage customer risk.

Agile 116

Agile Development Productivity Management 116

Harvard Business

APRIL 19, 2016

To account for its success, many point to America’s entrepreneurial culture, its tolerance for failure and its unique ecosystem of venture funding. So for companies looking to create revolutionary products, identifying and accessing cutting edge, exploratory research is a key competitive advantage. ” We need to move faster.

Research 28

Research Company Conference Biotechnology 28

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Back in the 1990s, I worked as a hands-on program manager for a 12-person team. 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 what it feels like to people.)

Agile 110

Agile Culture Efficiency Development 110

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 27, 2020

Do you need feedback loops so you can: Cancel the project at any time (to manage schedule and cost risks. Assess technical risks so you can rework the architecture or design to manage feature set risks. Manage what you release to customers so you can manage defect, feature set, schedule, and cost risks.

Agile 101

Agile Culture Productivity Management 101

Johanna Rothman

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

The post image is my chasm image from Manage It! The closer to the left your products are, the more your managers might be open to changing their behaviors and the culture. TL; DR: “Stop making it harder” is a culture problem. The design reviews were about the integrity of the product and the code.

Culture 126

Culture Management Productivity Agile 126