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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. Demo that value on a regular cadence. How do we create partnerships?

How To 125
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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 70
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Agile Approaches Offer Strategic Advantage; Agile Tools are Tactics, Part 2

Johanna Rothman

Example 1: Startup/Small Organization with Few Products. They offer their product in two versions: Pro and Lite. The first was not waiting for the end of an iteration to demo or release. They demo'd every week on Wednesday mornings and then they released after the demo. Let's start with a couple of examples. Others mob.

Agile 105
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Shorter Plans Results in More Management Ease and Better Results

Johanna Rothman

But there are several problems with all this planning: These plans require prediction at all levels, from strategy to product to what the team delivers. However, too often, the managers prevent product innovations or strategy changes because they planned so much. That's the product. ” (Often a quarter.

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

Johanna Rothman

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 94
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More Meetings = More Clients

The Fearless Marketer

Let’s say you’re a manager who’s looking for somebody to help their team work more productively and creatively. Do they look up productivity consultants on Google, find a web product page about “Productivity and Creative Services for Businesses” and then click on the buy button? Wouldn’t that be nice! Not gonna happen.

Meeting 62
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Three Slightly Ranty Thoughts on “Back” to Normal

Johanna Rothman

They hired me because they were in danger of going out of business due to their inability to release a working product. That's because they had an architecture that couldn't scale, people who couldn't do the work, and a mess of a product. Instead, tell the manager to create the environment where the team can release the product.).