I always get a kick out of online discussions referencing agile project managers as if those are some special subset of the project management population! MORE
Since 2015 when Google’s research identified psychological safety as one of the key attributes of high performing teams, it has received a lot of airtime. MORE
Those of us who have managed projects with team members dispersed across distant time zones are well aware of the risks caused by geographic, cultural and temporal distance. MORE
Those of you who have followed me for a while will know that I value pragmatism over absolutism when it comes to delivery practices, tools and techniques. Pick the right tool for the right job should be a guiding principle followed by all project teams. Easier said than done! MORE
During a presentation at a local agile meetup this past week I asked the audience to think about what sorts of projects, products or organizations wouldn’t be a good fit for the use of agile or adaptive approaches and one of the attendees felt that regulatory projects weren’t suitable. MORE
Information radiators can help stakeholders remain informed and can reduce effort spent by a team in handling requests for updates but to reap these benefits we must ensure that the information published meets their needs. MORE
An early project management lesson learned is that it is a good practice to start with the end in mind, especially when it comes to defining what done looks like. MORE
Project management practices have been used since human beings first started to work together to achieve greater outcomes than they could have accomplished as individuals. MORE
According to John Kotter’s model for leading change, the first step to overcoming inertia requires us to instill a sense of true urgency in those we need to support, implement and sustain the change. MORE
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. MORE
Agile transformations are susceptible to a variety of impediments but sometimes these hurdles are not as high as we believe them to be. In almost any company other than a startup, some or all of the following tangible blockers will not only be present at the beginning of the journey, they may continue to stymie teams years into their transformation. The inability to dedicate primary roles (e.g. Product Owners, Agile Leads) to a single value stream. MORE
A standard semi-annual ritual for many who live in cold climates is swapping all season to winter tires on our cars and back again. This exercise also presents a good opportunity to catch up on any other outstanding preventative maintenance for our vehicles. MORE
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. MORE
Recently, I’ve been experiencing frequent brief loss of Internet connectivity issues at home. I live in a major urban area, no internal or external home renovations have happened which would affect cabling, and my cable modem was recently swapped. MORE
Over time companies tend to take on projects with increasing levels of complexity. This happens either as a side benefit of a boost in organizational project management maturity, reactively when responding to regulatory or competitive pressures or organically as an outcome of strategic planning. MORE
Organizations that are in the midst of an agile transformation will often track how many projects within their portfolios are being delivered following an agile lifecycle. MORE
What are the implications to project risk management when you choose to deliver a project using an agile approach? Here are a few similarities: Risk needs to be managed through the project’s lifetime, not just at the very beginning. MORE
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development gave us four values supported by a dozen guiding principles. MORE
(If the title of my article for this week has you confused gentle reader, fret not – I’m just merging two distinct topics into a single post). In 2003, Barry Boehm and Richard Turner coined the acronym C.R.A.C.K. MORE
Outside of professional arenas, in sports such as weight-lifting, our competition is from within and not without. Committed gym rats are keenly aware of how much weight they can lift, push or pull for each of the muscle groups in their workout rotation. MORE
I’ve previously written about the importance of courage and discipline for agile teams, so let’s review another important quality – respect. MORE
Psychological safety is a key ingredient in the formation of high performance teams. Empowerment, recognition, flexible work time or place arrangements and free food can all help but these amount to very little if team members feel afraid to be express vulnerability or to be themselves. MORE
Through education or experience most of us learn early in our project management careers about the dangers of using percentage complete for any activity where the work completed cannot be reliably measured. This is unfortunately the case for most knowledge-based work. MORE
Dear reader, don’t be alarmed – this IS your regularly scheduled article! I’d like to thank Sante Vergini for providing the inspiration for the first topic and the second one had been a splinter in my mind so I couldn’t wait till next week to write about it. Why oh why would someone set up a virtual PMO? In one of my past articles , I had written about the challenges of establishing and running virtual PMOs. MORE
We have all experienced this: a key contributor announces their departure and a mad scramble ensues to transition their knowledge to the rest of the team. But does this change when the team is using an agile lifecycle? MORE
An agile project management office might sound to some like an oxymoron, right? This might be a reasonable assertion as many PMOs were first formed to provide oversight over a portfolio of projects and enforcing standards sounds like the antithesis to agility. MORE
Many professions are starting to face the threats and opportunities created by machine learning. For those who view the glass as being half-empty, a very real threat is that jobs which can be automated and performed more efficiently will diminish over time. MORE
When we think of the characteristics of a good team player, we tend to come up with attributes such as demonstrating selflessness, possessing empathy, or being a good communicator. MORE
In a recent role, I had the opportunity to review the lessons submitted by teams running large, complex projects and programs and found that over 90% of what was being captured and shared was of low or no value. MORE
When a team is following an agile delivery approach and they have developed a Definition of Done (DoD) containing one or more criteria indicating that no defects are permitted in or as an outcome of completed work items, they should not have to deal with bugs escaping a sprint, and hence, the practice of documenting defects should become obsolete. But how often does this happen in the real world? MORE
Benefits management, like project risk management, is practiced poorly by most organizations. While project intake processes usually require some articulation of expected benefits, few companies effectively monitor and control the realization of those benefits over the life of a project and beyond. MORE
Through their Lean Startup work, Steve Blank and Eric Ries have popularized the idea of focusing on delivering a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) which will meet a customer’s core needs while minimize investment and providing opportunities for learning, refinement and the ability to fail fast. MORE
The fourth and final statement in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development states that we should value responding to change over following a plan. The purpose behind this preference is to ensure that while a plan might be created to guide team efforts, there should be openness from the team, product owner and key stakeholders to encourage and incorporate changes which will deliver greater business value for our customers. MORE
I’ve written previously about what I look for when reviewing project manager resumes as well as what I look for when hiring for these positions. Testing a candidate’s knowledge of hard or soft skills provides limited benefit to the hiring process. MORE
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.
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 9, 2018
During a presentation at a local agile meetup this past week I asked the audience to think about what sorts of projects, products or organizations wouldn’t be a good fit for the use of agile or adaptive approaches and one of the attendees felt that regulatory projects weren’t suitable.
Kiron Bondale
AUGUST 26, 2018
Project management practices have been used since human beings first started to work together to achieve greater outcomes than they could have accomplished as individuals.
Kiron Bondale
JULY 29, 2018
Familiar – Noun, a supernatural spirit or demon, often in the form of an animal, supposed to serve and aid a witch or other individual.
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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?
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.
Kiron Bondale
AUGUST 12, 2018
I’ve previously written about the importance of courage and discipline for agile teams, so let’s review another important quality – respect.
Kiron Bondale
APRIL 22, 2018
A standard semi-annual ritual for many who live in cold climates is swapping all season to winter tires on our cars and back again. This exercise also presents a good opportunity to catch up on any other outstanding preventative maintenance for our vehicles.
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This eBook describes the process of managing the project budget and its associated costs.
Kiron Bondale
MAY 21, 2018
Those of you who have followed me for a while will know that I value pragmatism over absolutism when it comes to delivery practices, tools and techniques. Pick the right tool for the right job should be a guiding principle followed by all project teams. Easier said than done!
Kiron Bondale
MAY 13, 2018
Organizations that are in the midst of an agile transformation will often track how many projects within their portfolios are being delivered following an agile lifecycle.
Kiron Bondale
AUGUST 5, 2018
(If the title of my article for this week has you confused gentle reader, fret not – I’m just merging two distinct topics into a single post). In 2003, Barry Boehm and Richard Turner coined the acronym C.R.A.C.K.
Kiron Bondale
JULY 1, 2018
We have all experienced this: a key contributor announces their departure and a mad scramble ensues to transition their knowledge to the rest of the team. But does this change when the team is using an agile lifecycle?
Kiron Bondale
MAY 6, 2018
An agile project management office might sound to some like an oxymoron, right? This might be a reasonable assertion as many PMOs were first formed to provide oversight over a portfolio of projects and enforcing standards sounds like the antithesis to agility.
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Kiron Bondale
JUNE 24, 2018
Information radiators can help stakeholders remain informed and can reduce effort spent by a team in handling requests for updates but to reap these benefits we must ensure that the information published meets their needs.
Kiron Bondale
JUNE 3, 2018
When we think of the characteristics of a good team player, we tend to come up with attributes such as demonstrating selflessness, possessing empathy, or being a good communicator.
Kiron Bondale
APRIL 29, 2018
Outside of professional arenas, in sports such as weight-lifting, our competition is from within and not without. Committed gym rats are keenly aware of how much weight they can lift, push or pull for each of the muscle groups in their workout rotation.
Kiron Bondale
MARCH 4, 2018
I always get a kick out of online discussions referencing agile project managers as if those are some special subset of the project management population!
Speaker: Cliff Gilley, The Clever PM
As a Product Manager, you probably have to deal with technical debt. Regularly. Whether you like it or not - because it can’t be avoided. Unexpected details pop up, as small as UX that needs clean-up, and as big as a previously unforeseen flaw in the infrastructure of a project. We have to accept that nobody gets away without some technical debt. And of course, the longer you take to deal with your technical debt, the more difficult it becomes to address fully. Feeling frustrated? Fortunately, we can take a step back, gain clarity, and see how the decisions we make impact our technical debt. Then, we can make decisions about how we want to balance technical debt with other priorities. Are we willing to live with some level of technical debt in order to ship product and meet deadlines? Can we mitigate technical debt to get to an MVP faster?
Kiron Bondale
OCTOBER 16, 2016
Through their Lean Startup work, Steve Blank and Eric Ries have popularized the idea of focusing on delivering a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) which will meet a customer’s core needs while minimize investment and providing opportunities for learning, refinement and the ability to fail fast.
Kiron Bondale
FEBRUARY 25, 2018
I’ve written previously about what I look for when reviewing project manager resumes as well as what I look for when hiring for these positions. Testing a candidate’s knowledge of hard or soft skills provides limited benefit to the hiring process.
Kiron Bondale
FEBRUARY 11, 2018
In a recent role, I had the opportunity to review the lessons submitted by teams running large, complex projects and programs and found that over 90% of what was being captured and shared was of low or no value.
Kiron Bondale
JANUARY 14, 2018
Over time companies tend to take on projects with increasing levels of complexity. This happens either as a side benefit of a boost in organizational project management maturity, reactively when responding to regulatory or competitive pressures or organically as an outcome of strategic planning.
Speaker: Josh Martin, Director of Product Marketing, Logi Analytics
Embedded analytics has evolved from an afterthought to a necessity. But most companies don’t realize that the features they embed and how they develop have a lasting impact on revenue, customer churn, and competitive differentiation. The state of embedded analytics in 2018 is in flux. Learn from the experiences of 500+ application teams embedding analytics—including which features actually move the needle, how analytics benefits their companies, and what development approach yields the best results.
Kiron Bondale
OCTOBER 8, 2017
An early project management lesson learned is that it is a good practice to start with the end in mind, especially when it comes to defining what done looks like.
Kiron Bondale
AUGUST 19, 2018
When a team is following an agile delivery approach and they have developed a Definition of Done (DoD) containing one or more criteria indicating that no defects are permitted in or as an outcome of completed work items, they should not have to deal with bugs escaping a sprint, and hence, the practice of documenting defects should become obsolete. But how often does this happen in the real world?
Kiron Bondale
NOVEMBER 5, 2017
Many professions are starting to face the threats and opportunities created by machine learning. For those who view the glass as being half-empty, a very real threat is that jobs which can be automated and performed more efficiently will diminish over time.
Kiron Bondale
APRIL 1, 2018
Since 2015 when Google’s research identified psychological safety as one of the key attributes of high performing teams, it has received a lot of airtime.
Speaker: Daniel O'Sullivan, Product Designer, nCino and Jeff Hudock, Senior Product Manager, nCino
We’ve all seen the increasing industry trend of artificial intelligence and big data analytics. In a world of information overload, it's more important than ever to have a dashboard that provides data that's not only interesting but actually relevant and timely. Dashboards assist decision makers facilitate new ideas and business opportunities, increase customer approval rates, and analyze current business process. All of these activities play a vital role in providing the superior experience your customers demand.
Kiron Bondale
FEBRUARY 4, 2018
According to John Kotter’s model for leading change, the first step to overcoming inertia requires us to instill a sense of true urgency in those we need to support, implement and sustain the change.
Kiron Bondale
MARCH 18, 2018
Dear reader, don’t be alarmed – this IS your regularly scheduled article! I’d like to thank Sante Vergini for providing the inspiration for the first topic and the second one had been a splinter in my mind so I couldn’t wait till next week to write about it. Why oh why would someone set up a virtual PMO? In one of my past articles , I had written about the challenges of establishing and running virtual PMOs.
Kiron Bondale
OCTOBER 2, 2016
Psychological safety is a key ingredient in the formation of high performance teams. Empowerment, recognition, flexible work time or place arrangements and free food can all help but these amount to very little if team members feel afraid to be express vulnerability or to be themselves.
Kiron Bondale
MARCH 10, 2018
Agile transformations are susceptible to a variety of impediments but sometimes these hurdles are not as high as we believe them to be. In almost any company other than a startup, some or all of the following tangible blockers will not only be present at the beginning of the journey, they may continue to stymie teams years into their transformation. The inability to dedicate primary roles (e.g. Product Owners, Agile Leads) to a single value stream.
Speaker: Tristan Kromer, Lean Agile Coach, Kromatic
Some teams struggle to constantly optimize conversion rates without understanding the financial impact of those conversion rates. Sometimes that 0.1% increase isn't worth the engineering time we're spending! Early stage startups in particular may not need a four year business plan, but they need to start building out a model which will show how they can someday be profitable. At the very least, they need to be able to see the impact of a change in retention rates to their user growth.
Kiron Bondale
SEPTEMBER 25, 2016
What are the implications to project risk management when you choose to deliver a project using an agile approach? Here are a few similarities: Risk needs to be managed through the project’s lifetime, not just at the very beginning.
Kiron Bondale
JULY 8, 2018
The fourth and final statement in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development states that we should value responding to change over following a plan. The purpose behind this preference is to ensure that while a plan might be created to guide team efforts, there should be openness from the team, product owner and key stakeholders to encourage and incorporate changes which will deliver greater business value for our customers.
Kiron Bondale
APRIL 15, 2018
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development gave us four values supported by a dozen guiding principles.
Kiron Bondale
DECEMBER 17, 2017
Benefits management, like project risk management, is practiced poorly by most organizations. While project intake processes usually require some articulation of expected benefits, few companies effectively monitor and control the realization of those benefits over the life of a project and beyond.
Speaker: Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant, Rothman Consulting Group
Before agile approaches took the world by storm, we used Gantt charts and defects to measure project and program progress. We had trouble measuring product progress until just before release—often too late to change anything. Join Johanna as she discusses how agile approaches change what we measure, and possible measures you might use in projects, programs, and to assess the product as the team(s) build it.
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