This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
So when does it make sense to customize your agile approach to gain a strategic advantage? They want an agile approach, so they started with Scrum. 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. We do what works.”
The teams want to use an agile approach so they can incorporate learning. The managers might even think this is roadmap reflects an agile approach. There's nothing about this roadmap that's agile. You can decide if you need an agile approach. Demo on a regular cadence. The managers want rigid roadmaps.
Back in Part 1 , I wrote about how stage-gate approaches were as agile as we could use at the time. We had one delivery, so our agility was about canceling the project if we couldn't finish it. Once our customers saw demos, they wanted to change things. Opportunities for Agility. So, more agility than a serial approach.
I see many teams and team members who say, “Agile stinks. ” When I ask people what's happening, they say: We're doing an agile death march because someone else already told us what we have to do and the date it's due. And don't get me started on how coaches tend to do life coaching instead of support for agility.)
Opportunities for More Agility. Because we release every time we finish a feature set, we have these opportunities for agility: Re-rank the remaining feature sets. See and demo the product as it grows. If your company can't create an agile culture, consider an incremental lifecycle, especially if you have schedule risks.
He thought agile approaches would work to “meet” and “enforce” deadlines. Even when we use a non-agile approach , schedule variance doesn't make sense. Because the “teams” couldn't deliver something small, they didn't demo very often. Over months, they stopped demoing anything.
I have a new book: Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility. I wrote it because I'm concerned about what I see in too many supposedly agile teams: Crazy-long backlogs and roadmaps. Worse, sometimes the team doesn't demo or deliver. The post Tired of Fake Agility?
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. If you and your team have been practicing real agility, you might say these ideas barely show any agility at all. That's fine.
They've started to use agile approaches. Capitalization for Agile Work. Let me walk you through an example of a 5-person agile team. So, let's assume the team spends a total of 4 hours planning, retrospecting, demoing, all that non-creation time out of the 40 hours the team works. (I Why Capitalize?
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. Can you create an agile culture for your team even if you can't change how the organization works? 1,2 and so on.
Many new-to-agile teams use some form of iteration-based agile approach. Back in Time You Spend in Agile Meetings (near the bottom of the post), I enumerated all the possible meetings. I mentioned how you could integrate the demo work into an iteration if you create a column for the demo.
You can see demos. Agile and Lean Program Management , and in Create Your Successful Agile Project. When people outside of technology use agile approaches, they can start their work before the product is done. I would definitely watch demos every week or two, to make sure we're getting closer to the milestone criteria.
” For years, I explained that the more often the team or program could demo, the more the project or program could engage its stakeholders. See Customers, Internal Delivery, And Trust for a recent post about demos and trust.) The more frequently you can demo, the more your partners can trust you to deliver something.
I discussed the origins of the agile approaches in Part 5. In this post, I'll discuss how you can create an agile approach that fits your context. Why should you create your own agile approach? You deserve an agile approach that helps you achieve the business outcomes you need. What do you need? Start with the Team.
I started asking if you actually need an agile approach in Part 1 and noted the 4 big problems I see. Part 2 was why we need managers in an agile transformation. Part 4 was about how “Agile” is meaningless and “agile” is an adjective that needs to be applied to something. That would be resilient.
A colleague unfamiliar with lifecycles or agility asked, “How can we use sprints in this approach?” Not the thinking and learning that go into the deliverables where you end up with something demo-able, if not usable.” See Create Your Successful Agile Project for more details.). ” “Oooh.”
Whenever I teach agile approaches, I discuss the possible meetings a team might choose. A demo once every two weeks. A demo once every two weeks. (I I prefer a demo every time you release a story, but that’s me. If you use kanban, you might integrate a demo into the board. No demo meetings necessary.
In Costs of an Agile Approach for Hardware Products , I suggested that an iteration-based approach for hardware was too expensive. Agile software teams are cross-functional and interdependent. Many agile software teams have somewhere between four and seven people. Hardware Costs Limit Agile Approaches.
Scrum Master or Agile Project Manager? ” (You might like Why an Agile Project Manager is Not a Scrum Master.). She's an agile project manager. When she manages programs, she's an agile program manager. See a ton more about this role in Create Your Successful Agile Project.) Scrum is not her job.
That part discusses why managers see agile coaches and Scrum Masters as staff positions, not line jobs. This post is about your deep domain expertise, first in product, then in agility. Assess Your Product Subject Matter Domain Expertise There are at least two kinds of domain expertise: the product itself, and agile/lean expertise.
After that, they are given access to a simple demo environment with a standard set of configurations, where they can test how our system works. If your company uses other project management tools like Jira, MS Project, or Oracle Primavera, the demo environment will be adjusted accordingly. Data adjustment and integration.
Instead, I see assumptions that reveal a divide-and-conquer, and possibly a command-and-control culture, not an agile culture. Divide and Conquer is Anti-Agility I see the product owner and dev team as a divide-and-conquer approach to work. Agility requires a collaborative cross-functional team. When was the most recent demo?
See Agile Program Measurements to Visualize and Track Progress and Measure Cycle Time for my suggestions of what to measure. I have more ideas and a more in-depth discussion in Create Your Successful Agile Project.). Here are some examples: Demos, even of partially working product. I expect to see some kind of running code.
If you took an agile workshop sometime in the past 15 years, you probably played the “ ball game.” Especially since they've probably suffered through way too many “agile” workshops with more and more games. Show a demo of whatever you complete at the 15-minute mark. Why do I have to play a game?”
You have an agile roadmap to see where you're headed. Your team hates having to translate the agile planning into more traditional planning. 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.
Her ideal readers are the teams doing the work, so they can change their demos and reporting frequency. As a company, we need more demos and more data. However, we all need to see weekly demos according to the attached format. Please ensure your demo is ready every Wednesday by noon Eastern. Was Polly a little snarky?
That leads to people using agile approaches to focus on delivery. I have many suggestions in Agile and Lean Program Management for how to organize multiple cooperative and collaborative teams without a ton of bureaucracy.). (You might like the Balance Innovation, Commitment, & Feedback Loops series.). How You Might Discover.
might demo the feature. That defect escaped all your checklists, approvals, and demos. See What Lifecycle or Agile Approach Fits Your Context? Finally, they moved to an incremental lifecycle and then to an iterative and incremental but not agile lifecycle. Finally, the team, a product leader, or the customer(!)
Does this sound a lot like what agile teams do? Managers will want to see demos in these four weeks to inform the next four weeks of portfolio planning. Managers can explain which demos they expect to see, especially if the managers explain the experiments they want. It does to me. Managers Commit Three Decisions to Teams.
Early on in my agile practice, I believed in generalizing specialists. Here's how this might work for your agile team. You don't have an agile team because they're not collaborating on the work. Hooks for logs and demos. Anything else that makes development, testing, demo, and release easier.
Yes, the premise of my Agile and Lean Program Management book.) I have never seen those three conditions in any non-agile project, but that could be my experience and not universal. This team started off with a serial lifecycle, so they didn't even plan to have a demo until about September or so.
I see too much micromanagement, even in supposedly agile organizations. As an example, when managers don't bother to learn agile measures and what they mean and instead want a Gantt chart, “because how long could it take?” ” Or, when a manager imposes a “standard” agile approach.
When we already have a pretty good idea of what to do for a product, we can use demos to show our progress. Does that mean the portfolio team should watch the demos? But how can they see the value without watching the demos? Because a report does not convey the same information as a demo of some sort does.
Nor do the teams demo on a regular basis. The teams miss the feedback loops so critical for an agile approach. Their agile transformation falls apart. Let's think about how to create agile projects with short feedback loops, not projects that look like waterfall. Prevent Agile Projects that Look Like Waterfall.
In Create Your Successful Agile Project , I recommend the team end an iteration in the middle of a week. The Wednesday Agenda 9:30- 10 am (or thereabouts) demo the progress the team made. You might be using an agile approach, but it's not Scrum. See What's Wrong With Wednesday? That day needs an agenda. Read the Scrum Guide.)
In Part 1 , I suggested that when we organize by function, the recognition and rewards might prevent a successful agile transformation. I have found agile managers can succeed when they ask questions such as these: How can I make it easier for the people to do the right thing? I didn’t know anything about agile approaches then.
The longer the backlog, the less agile you can be, because no one's incorporating learning into the work. Instead, use the brainstorm ideas in Alternatives for Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Part 1, Think in Feature Sets. Create a weekly cadence of public demos. If you use an agile approach, I recommend teams stop estimating.
Innovation, agility and the ability to think laterally can overcome the economy, the pandemic and the general funk in the populace at the moment. See Jerry’s new speaker demo reel. His consulting practice, founded in 1990, works with individuals and organizations to make them memorable, trusted and more profitable. Disruption.
Many of my clients are trying to use short feedback loops in agile approaches. I wrote about this in Create Your Successful Agile Project.) What management (product management and stakeholders) should ask for is a demo at least every day or even more often. High Need for Product Innovation and Change.
I needed to demo more often. This is the same problem as in Want to Be More Effective (and Agile)? The demos build trust—and might offer the team feedback on the product and the product leader feedback on the backlog. .” Aha! Rethink Three Classic Management Assumptions.)
Many of my clients use an iteration-based agile approach. Why are you using an agile approach? If you're using an agile approach because you want to embrace change , then no, there might not be an answer to the “estimating for two weeks at a time.” Possibility 2: Use a Flow-Based Agile Approach.
Agile approaches can help a team release more often. The longer the team goes without a demo, the less replanning anyone can do. The post Frequent Releasing Can Lead to Short and Frequent Planning appeared first on Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant. The project portfolio people can replan the project portfolio.
That's why I wrote Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility. ) In addition, I ask teams to show visual progress , such as in a demo. I want architecture feedback loops as early as possible in the project, which is why I want visual progress with demos. That does work.
See Why Shared Services “Teams” Don’t Work with Agility. Demo inside the organization. The post Retire These Metaphors & Reframe the Discussion to be More Effective appeared first on Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant. Those pesky FTEs don't need health care or any of the other perks that come with employment.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 55,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content