People Are Not Resources
My manager reviewed the org chart along with the budget. “I need to cut the budget. Which resources can we cut?” “Well, I don’t think we can cut...
View ArticleCapacity Planning and the Project Portfolio
I was problem-solving with a potential client the other day. They want to manage their project portfolio. They use Jira, so they think they can see everything...
View ArticleManagers Manage Ambiguity
I was thinking about the Glen Alleman’s post, All Things Project Are Probabilistic. In it, he says, Management is Prediction as a inference from...
View ArticleCost, Value & Investment: How Much Will This Project Cost? - Part 1
I’ve said before that you cannot use capacity planning for the project portfolio. I also said that managers often want to know how much the project will...
View ArticleCost, Value & Investment: How Much Will This Project Cost? Part 2
This post is continued from Cost, Value & Investment: How Much Will This Project Cost, Part 1 We’ve established that you need to know how much this...
View ArticleProjects Where You Can't Predict an End Date
Do you have projects where you can’t predict an end date? These tend to be a job search, a change project, and with a tip of the hat to Cesar Abeid, your...
View ArticleChange is Learning: No Silver Bullets or Quick Fixes
Way back when I was a developer, my professors taught me structured design and design by contract. Those were supposed to be the silver bullets for...
View ArticleManagement Feedback: Are You Abrasive or Assertive?
Let me guess. If you are a successful woman, in the past, you’ve been told you’re too abrasive, too direct, maybe even too assertive. Too much. See The One...
View ArticleLarge Program? Release More Often
I’m working on the release planning chapter for Agile and Lean Program Management: Collaborating Across the Organization. There are many ways to plan...
View ArticleSmall Internal Releases Lead to Happy Customers
If you saw Large Program? Release More Often, you might have noted that I said, You want to release all the time inside your building. You need the...
View ArticleIs Your Culture Working the Way You Think it Is?
Long ago, I was a project manager and senior engineer for a company undergoing a Change Transformation. You know the kind, where the culture changes, along...
View ArticleFive Tips for Tactical Management
Sometimes, you just need to get on with the work. You need to give yourself some breathing room so you can think for a while. Here are some tips that will help...
View ArticleThree Alternatives for Making Smaller Stories
When I was in Israel a couple of weeks ago teaching workshops, one of the big problems people had was large stories. Why was this a problem? If your stories...
View ArticleMake Stories Small When You Have “Wicked” Problems
If you read my Three Alternatives to Making Smaller Stories, you noticed one thing. In each of these examples, the problem was in the teams’ ability to show...
View ArticleWho Removes Your Obstacles?
In self-organizing teams, teams remove their own obstacles. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. In Scrum, the Scrum Master is supposed to...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....