Projects Are Not The Problem

A lot of folks in the agile community feel like projects and project managers are a big part of the problem we have delivering software. My view is that projects are not really the problem… it’s projectized organizations that are the problem. Projectized organizations form when we have people organized into functional silos and assign them as necessary to project work. The underlying assumption...
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Getting Permission to Coach

Ever walk into a room and feel like no one is listening? It absolutely drives me nuts. Sometimes it happens in a lecture hall, sometimes a classroom, the worst is when it happens in...
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Agile Program and Portfolio Management – Agile2012 Slide Deck

220 people signed up for this talk but I think the room was at capacity at about 125 or 150.  Great turnout and lots of great discussion.  Mary Poppendieck came to my talk and said...
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Does Your Daily Stand-up Meeting Suck? This Is Probably Why…

Probably the most visible component of Scrum is the daily stand-up meeting. There are groups I’ve met that claim they are doing agile due to the mere presence of this one meeting....
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The Problem with Precision

I think engineers are interesting people… especially software engineers. Given what I do for a living, I get to work with a lot of software companies, and that means I get to spend...
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Kanban Isn’t the Answer to Bad Product Ownership

The Scrum Product Owner has a tough job. Translating business strategy into product strategy and ultimately into teeny-tiny user stories takes a ton of time and effort. Most Product...
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E is for Estimable

I’ve been a big fan of Bill Wake’s INVEST model since I first learned about it through Mike Cohn’s book on user stories. Like every other agile blogger out there,...
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How to Think About Estimating

Sometimes we get wrapped around the axle about estimating. People ask why we should bother estimating when we know that our estimates are always wrong. Some folks go so far as to say...
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Dependencies Break Agile

I’ve been running around lately telling people that the presence of dependencies break Agile. Just for the record, I want to explain what I mean when I talk about dependencies. Agile...
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The Case for Project Management

How far ahead should we plan? I depends on what you are building, when you need to have it done… and if you aren’t going to get done… how soon do you need to know about it. If...
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Lightweight Documentation… Not Lightweight Thinking

by Mike Cottmeyer, 22 September 2011
The Agile Blogosphere

Working software over comprehensive documentation… this line in the manifesto has been used to justify all manner of undisciplined thinking over the years. Just because we value working...
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Who Owns the Risk?

Back in my late 20′s I was a project manager in a pretty good sized IT shop. I worked under a great VP that put me in situations that were really beyond my abilities.  He fundamentally...
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The Real Reason We Estimate

by Mike Cottmeyer, 18 September 2011
Agile Estimating

Over the past few months, various blog posts have popped up talking about estimation, how estimation is unnecessary, how estimation is waste… and that maybe we should stop estimating...
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Understanding Enterprise Agile

Based on the topics presented at the Agile 2011 conference last week, I think that we as a community might misunderstand what enterprise agile is all about. To me, enterprise agile...
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Work In Process Limits, Revisited

by Mike Cottmeyer, 3 August 2011
Lean Development

I am noticing a troubling trend with many of the organizations I interact with. The project teams have a release date, a relatively fixed team size, and somewhere between 5 to 10 times...
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Balance the System First

Let’s say you are a company that builds an enterprise class software product, one that in general is pretty standard, but always seems to require some degree of customization… or...
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Agile Best Practices?

I’ve decided I really don’t like the idea of best-practices… it’s too easy to use them as a crutch. Some of our best stuff… daily standup meetings, sprint planning meetings,...
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