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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.

Blog Post
Apr 24 2012 - 9:13am
I have a tough time with my perfection rules. I want to be perfect. I’m not, of course. I want to be. So using leanpub and publishing early and often pushes me way out of my comfort zone. Which is why you haven’t heard anything from me about my book under development up until now. Yesterday, I announced the beta of my newest book Manage Your Job Search: Reduce Your Overwhelm, Focus...
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Blog Post
Apr 11 2012 - 9:04am
My column, Roll Your Own, about how to organize for teamwork for a geographically distributed agile project team is up. Please leave comments there. Enjoy!
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Blog Post
Apr 6 2012 - 11:37am
I’ve had several conversations in email and with clients recently that have all been about this question: “What do we do about our infrastructure?” Either the project or the program has to create/update/upgraded their architecture or automated test infrastructure, pay down technical debt, or somehow do something that’s not part of a story.
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Blog Post
Apr 4 2012 - 10:53am
Tom Cagley interviewed me a few weeks ago on his Software Process and Measurement Cast. It’s posted now, as # 180.When Tom interviews me, he makes me think. This is good. I would love to hear your comments about this one. We started with transparency and wove our way around to several topics. I even ranted about the craziness of individual raises and how that disturbs the system of working in...
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Blog Post
Apr 2 2012 - 10:43am
A few weeks ago, Peter Armstrong interviewed me for Leanpub, to ask me why I enjoyed writing on Leanpub. That podcast is up now on the Leanpub Buzz page.What’s very funny is that the interview is a few weeks old. I had no idea he was going to post it right after I wrote Dear Author. About 11 minutes in, I talk about the boring trap, the passive voice trap in my own writing. I think this is pretty...
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Blog Post
Mar 29 2012 - 7:52am
In my role as technical editor for the Agile Journal and as a reviewer for my trusted colleagues, I have the opportunity to read drafts of articles and some books. I see some troublesome behavior. I know it because I exhibit it. In all cases, the author receives feedback the author doesn’t like, but doesn’t want to stop writing.
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Blog Post
Mar 26 2012 - 7:26am
I’m offering a public workshop about Transitioning to Agile in Stockholm, May 28-29, 2012, in English. Developers’ lives change when you transition to agile. Product owners’ lives change. Managers lives’ change. The organization’s culture changes. And, when a project and an organization transitions to agile, the testers and test managers lives’ change, too....
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Blog Post
Mar 23 2012 - 8:29am
I’m offering public project portfolio management workshops in Sao Paulo, Brazil on May 8-9, partnering with Adaptworks. I will be speaking in English. This is a full 2-day workshop. On May 30, I will be in Stockholm, offering a special one-day version of the workshop, partnering with Citerus. I will also be speaking in English here.
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Blog Post
Mar 20 2012 - 10:44am
As a consultant, I want the flexibility to adapt my work to take advantage of opportunities that might arise in a given week–to write an article or blog post, or to propose a project to a new client.  And, while I try to plan a week’s worth work, I need the flexibility to adapt my work on the fly. I work in small chunks, finishing work. I like seeing completed work. I have a great...
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Blog Post
Mar 19 2012 - 8:24am
I’m tech-editing an article for the Agile Journal. I’m having a discussion with the author about the words “productivity” and “throughput.” I believe that what we measure in agile teams is throughput, the number of features through the team over time. I don’t think we measure productivity, the number of features per person or per team over time. In kanban...
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