Johanna Rothman

JUNE 5, 2023

That's because each project offers different value over the product's lifetime. See Product Roles, Part 4: Product Orientation and the Role of Projects for images of why we want ever-increasing product value, but why we might space the projects out.) However, today, I realized there are also product risks.

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Johanna Rothman

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

The managers don't believe the teams need product owners, so the teams don't have POs. Those outcomes can help teams decide which agile approach(es) to start with and adapt. Let's start with who wants the teams to use an agile approach. Who Wants the Teams to Use an Agile Approach? They're having trouble with Scrum.

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Agile Management Comparison Productivity 108

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 8, 2020

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. I had to explain to my managers how the project would work. My managers were smart but didn't understand how to spiral time.

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Johanna Rothman

DECEMBER 2, 2022

On the ANE panel last night, an agile coach asked, “What's my path forward as an agile coach? Focus on business results, not agility per se. People who facilitate larger efforts, such as product leaders, portfolio managers, and most middle managers, feel the pressure to “deliver” or “perform.”

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Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 10, 2024

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.)

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Johanna Rothman

APRIL 1, 2024

(That link just goes to the first post) My most recent book: Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility. In addition, here's the unedited transcript: Agile _ Adapt – Expert Talk – Johanna Rothman – April 2024 in docx format. I hope you enjoy this one.

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Agile Video Interviews Productivity 89

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 6, 2020

Are you trying to make an agile framework or approach work? Maybe you've received a mandate to “go agile.” Or, maybe you're trying to fit an agile framework into your current processes—and you've got a mess. I've seen plenty of problems when people try to adopt “agile” wholesale.

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Agile Software Construction Analysis 111

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 21, 2024

I started this series by discussing why managers didn't perceive the value of agile coaches and Scrum Masters in Part 1, resulting in layoffs.) Then, in Part 2 , I asked those unemployed agilists to review their functional skills, the skills people need to do a product development job well. Especially, Agile is Not a Silver Bullet.

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Johanna Rothman

JULY 29, 2021

Several of my clients have internal struggles about how to internally see the future of the product. 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. What can you do?

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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. Can you create an agile culture for your team even if you can't change how the organization works?

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Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 12, 2019

I spoke at Agile 2019 last week. Here are my thoughts and where I think the “agile” industry is headed. Problems I See with “Agile” Here's a summary of problems I saw last week: Too many people think “agile” will solve all their problems. Do You Need an Agile Approach?

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Johanna Rothman

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

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. See Manage Unplanned Feedback Loops to Reduce Risks and Create Successful Products.)

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Johanna Rothman

JUNE 6, 2022

They want a single product roadmap to serve all these purposes: Focus the team's work for this specific product for the short term. Show customers where the company thinks the product is headed. The more specific overview of when salespeople might expect new features or new products.). What management thinks they want.

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Productivity Agile Data Travel 115

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 6, 2023

” These people claim there is no need for either role in an effective team, especially an agile team because the team can manage its own deliverables. While some agile teams can manage their own deliverables, that's not the only role for a project or program manager. Clarify the Product and Team Objectives. I'm not alone.

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Management Agile How To Productivity 109

Johanna Rothman

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

Strategy and Product Feedback Loops Many of my middle-management and senior leadership clients want certainty about future work. Does that sound like an agile team to you? However, managers don't create features as agile teams do. Agile teams don't assume they make a final product the first time out.

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Johanna Rothman

MARCH 14, 2024

And even if you can find an agile coaching or Scrum Master job, the pay is so terrible, you don’t want to take it. That’s because these managers think agile coaching and Scrum Mastering is a staff job, not a line job. At what level do you understand the products you’ve worked on? Those are functional skills.

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Agile How To Metrics Productivity 100

Johanna Rothman

JULY 23, 2020

You can do this even if each of you is an expert on various areas or different products when you use flow efficiency. Here's how Clare's team worked: Every person started their own story. See Who's Playing Agile Schedule Games? ). No More Agile Death Marches. Agile approaches are all about collaboration.

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Agile System Productivity Efficiency 91

Johanna Rothman

DECEMBER 11, 2019

We had (and still have) too many products to keep the same teams on them for a long time. For programs, the team stayed together and moved to a different feature set/internal product until the program finished. We could move to a new product and/or a new team. My job was to smooth the way for people to deliver products.

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Tom Spencer

APRIL 8, 2014

The book provides six principles that the author’s believe can make organisations more agile, competitive, and responsive by helping employees become more autonomous, cooperative and empowered. The car manufacturer tried to do this by moving its production engineers to the warranty department. Extend the shadow of the future.

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Productivity Engineering Efficiency Agile 98

Johanna Rothman

APRIL 9, 2024

I was on the Agile Uprising podcast this past Sunday, discussing my most recent book. Some of what we discussed: That managers want agility but do not care about any agile methods or frameworks. While we might think “agile” is another project organization method—or lifecycle—it's not. See (and hear!):

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Johanna Rothman

MARCH 18, 2024

That part discusses why managers see agile coaches and Scrum Masters as staff positions, not line jobs. 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.

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Agile How To Metrics Productivity 81

Johanna Rothman

APRIL 14, 2020

Let me address a little about business agility and innovation. Business agility allows us to create a culture where we plan to change. Too many people think business agility is about the ability to do more of the same, faster. ” Or mine, “Explore and support effective ways of managing product development.”

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Agile Efficiency Culture Resources 83

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 29, 2022

See Create Your Successful Agile Project for more details.) Also, see the Pairing, Swarming, Mobbing post so you can see how people might work together, keeping the team's WIP low. My suggestion for team-based WIP is the floor of the number of people on the team/2. If your data is unreliable, fix that problem first.

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Development Productivity How To Efficiency 121

Johanna Rothman

JUNE 30, 2022

However, agile teams have one specific “tool” to create better predictability: right-sizing their stories. When I say that, teams roll their eyes at me—until they learn to make product minimums and split stories. But right-sizing works even better when we need to forecast product development.

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How To Agile Productivity Examples 25

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 15, 2021

When Mark Kilby and I wrote From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams , we differentiated between these types of teams: Collocated, as all the people are within 8-16 m of each other. In Developing Products in Half the Time , Smith and Reinertsen used the Allen Curve (in the above image) to decide whether a team was collocated or not.

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How To Agile Management Productivity 110

Johanna Rothman

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

Some of my clients have struggled with their project governance as they move to agile approaches. However, the governance people judge the projects and programs by how well their original estimates (for date and cost) line up with the actuals. This kind of measurement is antithetical to agile principles. That productivity thing.

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Agile Software Government Productivity 68

Johanna Rothman

APRIL 18, 2024

Do you have an overstuffed backlog the way Jenny did in Create More Success: How to Say No to “Everything” to Say Yes to What’s Necessary Now ? How can you prevent an overstuffed backlog, roadmap, or all those great ideas from interrupting your team from finishing its work? That means you have options, not a backlog, for your products.

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Productivity How To Metrics Tools 72

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 6, 2020

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. This hardware team swarms on a product.

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Agile Productivity Software Development 52

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

In How Product Goals Make it Easier to Create Sprint Goals and Reduce Feature Factories, Part 1 , I started responding to Tom's interview question. Here's the question again: “The product owner and dev team cannot decide on a sprint goal, even after hours of discussion. ” All agile approaches limit WIP (Work in Progress).

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Agile How To Productivity Software 94

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. But teams can change how they work—in any approach. But here's how they can work to create more agility.

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Agile Metrics Efficiency Culture 71

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Product owners have many challenges: They need to keep at least two thoughts about the product: what it needs to be in the near future, and what the organization wants it to be in the (distant) future. But the biggest problem I see is this: Effective product owners belong to at least two teams and maybe more. Strategic work.)

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Productivity Strategy Strategy& Strategy 100

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 20, 2020

The original signatories of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development wanted to solve these specific problems: How can we: Bring more adaptability to software development? For example (books have affiliate Amazon links): Takeuchi and Nonaka published The New New Product Development Game in HBR in 1986. Womack and Daniel T.

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Agile Software Productivity Culture 66

Johanna Rothman

JULY 9, 2019

Now that agile teams stay together, we can change the kickoff to more project-specific work. I wrote an article several years ago, Keys to Chartering an Agile Project. In Create Your Successful Agile Project , I suggested a reframe for the charter. The question I asked was this: How little can we do to satisfy our needs?

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Brimstone Consulting

JUNE 29, 2020

important;}”] A conversation on agile strategy and opportunity with Andy Frawley and Bob Weiler. The current environment requires agility and agility, Bob Weiler reminds us, starts with market realities. The process of developing and executing agile strategy highlights critical issues. Market Realities.

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Agile Strategy Strategy& Strategy 95

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Isn't every iterative and incremental approach an agile approach? We often hear agile approaches are a mindset. An agile approach requires a change in culture at the team level, at the portfolio level, and in management. Agile approaches change what we discuss, how we work together, and what we reward.

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Agile Training Training Culture 70

Johanna Rothman

JULY 20, 2021

We talk a lot about empowered or self-organizing teams in the agile community. Everyone does the best job they know how to do. Instead of talking about empowerment, let's discuss how we trust teams and people to do their best job. And managers don't realize inspect-and-adapt is a necessary part of an agile culture.).

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Leadership Agile Policies Tools 141

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 20, 2020

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? Because your context is unique to you, your team, project, product, and culture. What do you need? Start with the Team.

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