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Unemployed Agilists: How to Increase Your Value to Get a Great Job, Part 3

Johanna Rothman

I assume you have some sort of functional product development expertise. If not, why are you in technical product development? This post is about your deep domain expertise, first in product, then in agility. First, the product-based expertise. That's often product people, testers, and some UI/UX people.

Agile 82
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How to Create Partnerships Instead of Using Stakeholders

Johanna Rothman

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 126
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Tired of Fake Agility? Choose When to Experiment and When to Deliver

Johanna Rothman

I have a new book: Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility. Worse, sometimes the team doesn't demo or deliver. See Manage Unplanned Feedback Loops to Reduce Risks and Create Successful Products.) That's because no product survives contact with the customers.

Agile 85
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Possible Test for Splitting Stories and Valuable Minimums

Johanna Rothman

No one wants to demo this work, because everyone thinks the demo will wander all over the place. Worse, no one wants to demo, because they can't see the value for any user. Use the Demo to Guide Sizing. Use the Demo to Guide Sizing. Start with the demo in mind. I bet you can think of more tests.

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What’s Wrong With Detailed Gantt Charts and How to Make Fewer Details Work for You

Johanna Rothman

In innovative products, the interdependencies can change any day. If your product does not need much innovation, you can plan for longer and know you will meet that plan. Those are the kinds of products that do not require much, if any, innovation. In addition, I ask teams to show visual progress , such as in a demo.

How To 62
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Create Feedback Loops (Agile Approaches) for Hardware Products

Johanna Rothman

In Costs of an Agile Approach for Hardware Products , I suggested that an iteration-based approach for hardware was too expensive. Those people work independently until they need to verify the product as a whole, works. This hardware team swarms on a product. You can use an agile approach for parts of a hardware product.

Agile 52
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Designing an Organization for a Product Approach, Part 2

Johanna Rothman

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?