Managing Product Development

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Managing Product Development

Management, especially good management, is hard to do. This blog is for people who want to think about how they manage people, projects, and risk.

Transition to Agile, Large Technical Debt, Small Project

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Oct 22 2012 - 3:41pm

Many months ago, Rebecca asked an interesting question about technical debt in projects. She asked, How to start when there’s a really big mess? In that case, small, just being a professional clean-up acts may not even make a dent.

Coach New People to Success

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Oct 17 2012 - 8:13am

I’ve been having some strange email conversations with two testers, one business analyst, and a project manager. Yes, a total of four new people. They have each found jobs on projects. And, they are in over their heads. Each of them wrote to me, hoping I would help.

Iteration Zero Column Posted at Gantthead

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Oct 10 2012 - 12:08pm

I wrote a column for Gantthead, How to Use Iteration Zero (or Not). I’m not a big fan of iteration zero, except for learning. In which case, it’s a great idea. Go take a look and see what you think. Please leave comments over there.

StarWest Slides Posted on SlideShare

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Oct 9 2012 - 11:00am

I delivered a keynote last week at StarWest, Becoming a Kick-A** Test Manager.” If you want to watch me in action, you can register for the virtual conference, and see a number of the keynotes and talks. I had an interview, too.

Management Myth About “No Time for Training” Posted

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Oct 3 2012 - 9:36am

I have another management myth posted on Stickyminds. This one is about training. “Management Myth #9: We Have No Time for Training” is up on the site.

July Pragmatic Manager About Culture Posted

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Oct 1 2012 - 12:58pm

I’m finally writing a Pragmatic Manager email to my faithful readers. That’s when I noticed I had forgotten to post my July email newsletter. Yikes! So, here is What Does Your Organization Reward? I am committed to emailing another email newsletter this week.

Gold, Silver, Bronze Comparison for the Project Portfolio Requires Collaboration

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Sep 28 2012 - 8:12am

When I was in Brazil teaching the project portfolio workshop, one of the participants explained that his organization sometimes did a form of gold/silver/bronze comparison among the projects.

Management Myth About Managers and Technical Work

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Sep 5 2012 - 11:30am

My most recent management myth is up on Techwell, Management Myth #8: I Can Still Do Significant Technical Work. I see managers catch themselves in this one all the time. Maybe you do too. Maybe you disagree with me. Comment over there, please. BTW, This article is a partial attempt to answer the question, “How technical should a manager be?”

Changing Iteration Contents Mid-Sprint

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Sep 4 2012 - 10:34am

I facilitated a project management clinic last week at PSL. One of the questions was this: We have a product owner who persists in changing the contents of the sprint during the sprint. This is difficult for us. It costs us to change the content. Okay, this is a huge pain in the tush. It’s just like multitasking, and you know how much I like that. (Not at all!)

For Programs, Short is Beautiful

Blog Post

by Johanna Rothman

Aug 20 2012 - 11:17am

In my talk, How Much Will this Project Cost? at Agile 2012 last week, I got to say, “Short is beautiful.” For those of you who have never seen me, I’m five feet tall. The question was something like this: For programs, don’t you want longer iterations, so people don’t have the overhead of planning, of retrospectives, of demos, of all of that?