Are you trying to use story points for estimation? If so, you might have encountered these problems: Story points reflect the ideal thinking of the team, not the actual experience of the team. Your managers don't want story points—they want durations and dates. In the absence of sufficient information, everyone makes up fiction (human stories) about what they want to happen. Story points require magical thinking. Cycle time does not. That's why I recommend all teams (including management teams) measure cycle time, not velocity. However, too often, we don't like what cycle time tells us. But ..read more

My 60 Seconds of Writing WIP this week is from the speaking book. Enjoy! The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of Johanna’s Writing WIP for April 19, 2024, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This excerpt is from the speaking book. Go Meta to Design Your Presentation Because you're speaking from your experience and expertise, you might notice several patterns that do not serve people well. Those are often your audience's problems. Instead of talking directly about the details of the work or their solutions, you might discuss how people ..read more

I had the pleasure of interviewing Stefan Wolpers about his new book: The Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide: Challenges Every Scrum Team Faces and How to Overcome Them. Here's our conversation:     Stefan's LinkedIn profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanwolpers/ And here is a universal book link for Stefan's book (all the stores in one link): https://books2read.com/u/mVn8JJ The post A (Video) Conversation with Stefan Wolpers About His Scrum Anti-Patterns Book appeared first on Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant ..read more

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? I offered “now” advice in that newsletter. But what about the future? How can you prevent an overstuffed backlog, roadmap, or all those great ideas from interrupting your team from finishing its work? You have several options: Separate the customer-facing problems from all the other ideas. Implement or fix those. Throw all the other ideas away because the good ideas come around again. (Or, create a parking lot.) Change your language. Instead of backlo ..read more

My podcast this week is from the speaking book. Enjoy! The podcast: The video: https://youtu.be/9pe4m8IFDHI The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of Johanna’s Writing WIP for April 12, 2024, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This excerpt is from the speaking book. This chapter focused on a future vision based on your personal expertise and experience. Sometimes, you might offer an example of what actually occurred at a specific organization. That's called an experience report, a case study, or a lessons learned report. Experience repo ..read more

My 60 seconds of Writing WIP is from the speaking book. Enjoy! The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of Johanna’s Writing WIP for April 5, 2024, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This excerpt is from the speaking book. After the little giggles or murmurs in response to that story, I ask people to put their hands up if they're supposed to multitask between at least two projects. Then I say, “When I get to your maximum number of projects, put your hand down.” I increase the number of projects by one and remind people to put their hands ..read more

My 60 Seconds is from the speaking book this week. Enjoy! The podcast is here: And the video is already on my YouTube channel. (I realize you can tell the time of year and when I need a haircut from the videos, but I decided that's part of my “charm.”) The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of Johanna’s Writing WIP for March 29, 2024, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This excerpt is from the speaking book. Start With Your Audience's Problems Your audience comes to your presentation because they have problems and want solutions. So the ..read more

I have never found Gantt charts to be useful. When I say that to my clients, some of them tell me they do find use in Gantt charts. Specifically, the people who like Gantt charts say they can predict where the project is headed. In addition, they can see the various interdependencies across the work. They say they know—from the Gantt and without a doubt—when the project will finish. All my experiences negate theirs. In fact, I find that Gantt charts tend to obfuscate the reality of the project. In innovative products, the interdependencies can change any day. As for the date? The Gantt chart ..read more

This week, my writing WIP is from the speaking book. Enjoy! Or, watch the video. The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is 60 Seconds of Johanna’s WIP for March 22, 2024, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This excerpt is from the speaking book. Do You Worry About Imposter Syndrome? Imposter Syndrome occurs when you feel as if you are not competent. You might even feel as if you had nothing to do with your previous successes. When you speak, you might worry your audience sees through your supposed competence. That's why I recommend you only speak fro ..read more

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. While those skills are useful, they are not enough. That's why I then asked people to review their product-oriented domain expertise and agile-focused domain expertise in Part 3. If you have sufficient functional skills, domain expertise, and agile expertise, use the advice in Part 1 to iterate through your ..read more