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Early experimentation is key to reducing project risk
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 8, 2019
Inspection and adaptation are two of the pillars of the Scrum framework but all agile methods recognize the wisdom of Deming’s Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle.
Kiron Bondale
Change management helps when implementing risk responses
Kiron Bondale
MARCH 3, 2019
A student in a project management class I taught shared the concern that it was very hard for her to get risk responses implemented.
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How open are YOU to changing your launch plans?
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 1, 2019
During the last week PMI announced that, based on the feedback they had received from stakeholders, they would be delaying the significant changes to the Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification exam which had originally planned to be launched in mid-December 2019 to July 1, 2020.
Handling complexity requires psychological safety
Kiron Bondale
JANUARY 19, 2020
I wrote two weeks back about Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and the benefit of models such as Cynefin and the Theory of Constraints for being able to understand them. What I didn’t focus on in that article was how important the people element is when dealing with CAS.
Task Management For Project Managers
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How can project planning that stretches over months or years remain relevant and account for new ad-hoc activities that arrive every day?
Cultural transformations of high-performing teams
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 1, 2019
While I was delivering a course on agile fundamentals this week, one of the learners in the class asked me how the mindset and behaviors normally associated with agile teams might impact or be impacted by culture.
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Thriving at the Edge of Chaos – a review
Kiron Bondale
JANUARY 5, 2020
Over the past couple of years I have regularly heard companies, their portfolios and even individual projects referred to as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS).
How do you handle unresponsive key project stakeholders?
Kiron Bondale
JANUARY 12, 2020
It is a common challenge for anyone who has managed projects for a meaningful amount of time. One or more of your key stakeholders who are integral to the successful completion of the project appears unwilling to engage as expected.
I, for one, welcome our new PM AI overlords
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 29, 2019
A frequently asked question in the main ProjectManagement.com community discussion group is about the perceived impacts of machine learning on project delivery.
Influencing the eternal optimism of a delivery team
Kiron Bondale
MAY 26, 2019
When I teach agile fundamentals classes, I frequently emphasize the importance of inspection and adaptation. Teams which don’t use feedback loops with their products and their processes should not consider themselves to be very agile.
Managing The Project Budget - Developing Your Project Management Skills
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This eBook describes the process of managing the project budget and its associated costs.
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What’s the right sprint length for your team?
Kiron Bondale
MAY 5, 2019
The Scrum Guide calls sprints the “heart of Scrum” and also indicates that they should be one month or less.
Proactive dependency management with agile approaches
Kiron Bondale
APRIL 7, 2019
When we are managing projects using a predictive delivery approach, dependency identification and tracking is done as part of the BPUF (Big Planning Up Front) exercise using the activities from a work breakdown structure and the collective wisdom of our team members and key stakeholders.
I may be a “Crazy Fool” but I consider the A-Team to be agile!
Kiron Bondale
NOVEMBER 3, 2019
When teaching agile classes, I’m occasionally asked if I could provide an example of an agile team from cinema or television. While the first Avengers movie does a good job of illustrating Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development (especially storming!), they are far from being agile.
PMI plus Disciplined Agile might be a marriage made in Heaven
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 8, 2019
The announcement of the acquisition of Disciplined Agile (DA) by PMI is almost a month old so I thought I would share my thoughts on it. There is no doubt that PMI has been flirting with agile progressively over the past decade.
Top 5 Project Management Report Templates
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These FREE most popular templates will help you perform your role more efficiently.
Do your performance evaluation and recognition systems support cross-functional teamwork?
Kiron Bondale
NOVEMBER 17, 2019
While it is usually Wally who openly expresses those thoughts which we normally keep to ourselves, Dilbert is letting his inner voice do the talking in today’s strip. Let’s imagine for a moment that Dilbert’s co-worker is part of a cross-functional team which Dilbert is part of.
All knowledge areas are important but some are more important than others
Kiron Bondale
JUNE 2, 2019
I am occasionally asked by learners in my project management fundamental classes which is the most important knowledge area in the PMBOK® framework.
Helping functional managers through an agile transformation
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 16, 2018
A lot has been written about the challenges caused by functional managers when their company undergoes an agile transformation. But with this emphasis on what they shouldn’t be doing, not as much gets published about the specific activities we should be doing to help them through the change.
Walk a Mile in Your Customer's Shoes
Speaker: Steven Haines, Founder and CEO, Sequent Learning Networks
Product professionals use phrases like "voice of the customer," and "user experience" so often that it can be easy to lose sight of their actual meanings. How can we, as product professionals, learn to keep customers and users at the heart of our work? Join Steven Haines, globally recognized thought leader and author, as he guides us through a memorable journey demonstrating how you can walk a mile in their customer's shoes. He'll explore how, by developing true empathy for your users, you can ensure you're creating the features and products they actually want.
Small is beautiful for product backlog items
Kiron Bondale
NOVEMBER 24, 2019
One of the reasons for having small work items at the top of a product backlog is so the team is able to complete them within a short amount of time.
The perils of over proactivity
Kiron Bondale
JUNE 16, 2019
At the start of our vacation, we had one stop en route to our final destination. We were supposed to have a two hour layover, but after landing we learned that our outbound flight would be delayed by another hour.
Might earned VALUE be an oxymoron for projects following a predictive life cycle?
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 15, 2019
(As is often the case, one of the learners in a course I taught this week provided the inspiration for this article, so thanks Maca!). The PMBOK® Guide, Sixth Edition defines Earned Value as “ The measure of work performed expressed in terms of the budget authorized for that work.
Want to reduce digital distraction for your team? Physician, heal thyself!
Kiron Bondale
JULY 14, 2019
Two articles caught my attention this morning so I thought I’d connect the dots between them in this week’s article. The first article indicates that the Microsoft Teams collaboration support tool has passed Slack in terms of daily users.
How To Take Action on Customer Discovery
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
We all want to build successful products - and that means satisfied customers. Before anything else, you must understand what problems you can solve. The best way to do that is to get out of the building and start asking questions. But how can you make the most of those conversations, and ensure that you walk away with productive insights? Join Nick Noreña, educator, entrepreneur, and currently Innovation Coach and Advisor at Kromatic, as he covers how we can effectively action our findings from customer discovery conversations.
Personal development action planning starts with the “What?” and “Why?” before the “How?”
Kiron Bondale
OCTOBER 6, 2019
How many times have you been on a project where your customer or some other key stakeholder has prematurely tried to jump to a solution without having fully articulated their needs and wants?
How effective are your agile ceremonies?
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 2, 2018
We hope that by conducting effective ceremonies we will achieve the agile trinity of improved value delivery, better quality and more fun. But these objectives might be reached via multiple paths so we might not be able to prove causality between our ceremonies and those objectives.
What challenges do distributed teams pose to others?
Kiron Bondale
AUGUST 4, 2019
Face-to-face communication around a shared modeling surface such as a whiteboard is considered to be a highly effective method of creating shared understanding.
Authentic agility avoids burnout
Kiron Bondale
JULY 7, 2019
Harvard Business Review published an article this week covering six causes of burnout and how we can reduce these. Let’s consider these through the lens of agility. Having an excessive workload over a prolonged period of time is one of the most common causes of burnout.
Make an Impact with Analytics and Journey Maps
Speaker: Kirui K. K., Co-founder and CEO of Tanasuk Africa
If you want to offer a better user experience, it can be tempting to track each and every data point in your product. However, this can quickly get complicated and overwhelming as you collect more and more data. How do you know which metrics will help you improve? Kirui K. K., Co-founder & CEO Tanasuk Africa, wants you to know that analytics don't have to be complicated to make an impact - no matter the size of your company. Join him as he explains how to create a customer journey map, then use that map to figure out the metrics you need to know - and how to use them.
Impacts of traditional project funding models on agile delivery
Kiron Bondale
JUNE 16, 2018
In one of my previous articles I’d written about the need for change across multiple areas of an organization when undertaking an agile transformation.
Justify yourself!
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 9, 2018
A project manager asked me this week whether I was aware of any studies which could be used to justify the assignment of a “real” project manager to manage a project as opposed to having this function performed by someone else within a team.
What are the tipping points for your agile transformation?
Kiron Bondale
NOVEMBER 4, 2018
I’ve frequently said that agile transformations are marathons and not sprints. But when someone runs a marathon there are mile markers to understand how far they’ve come and to help them get their second (or third or fourth) wind.
Is increasing agility a recurring resolution?
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 23, 2018
As we kickoff the final week of 2018, many of us will be making New Year’s resolutions. While some of these resolutions might relate to achieving a specific goal or objective (e.g. I resolve to run a marathon this year), most relate to changing our behavior (e.g.
Your Post-Launch Toolkit for Understanding Your Users
Speaker: Brittney Gwynn, former Director of Product, Simple Health
If you've ever launched an MVP, you know that the journey has only just begun. How do you figure out what to do next? You know that you need to look at how different user segments react, but how do you quickly distinguish signal from noise so you can iterate and improve? Join Brittney Gwynn, former Director of Product at Simple Health, as she explains how you can use early customer feedback, usage data, and continuous experimentation to optimize your journey to product-market fit. Whether you're at a brand-new company, or looking to innovate within a more mature organization, or anywhere in between, you'll come away with a new skill set, ready to make the most of your launches.
What are some of the underlying causes of ineffective project risk management?
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 15, 2019
The perils of myopic metrics and insular improvements
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 29, 2019
This Dilbert cartoon from December 23, 2019 illustrates a couple of anti-patterns which I’ve sometimes witnessed in companies who are going through an agile transformation.
The importance of radical candor for delivery teams
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 22, 2019
Kim Scott’s bestseller is normally read as a guide for managers but it provides equal value to the members of self-organized teams.
Our stories aren’t getting done!
Kiron Bondale
AUGUST 18, 2019
It is common to see teams new to those agile frameworks which use time boxes struggling to define product backlog items small enough to get completed within a sprint and still represent value.
A Simple Framework for Complex User Goals
Speaker: Hannah Stegen, Customer Service Manager, Crescendo
How can you measure and affect your users' behavior if they're not doing something that's easily measurable? You can monitor usage, activation, retention, and more, but those metrics don't always align with every one of your goals for your users. Hope is not lost, however: with the right framework, you can still make sure your users are on track. Join Hannah Stegen (she/her), Customer Success Manager at Crescendo as she explains how you can monitor even the most complex user journeys by breaking them up into Attitude, Intention, and Behavior.
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