Rich Lewis is the best I’ve worked with. When I met him he was a Business Analyst who, on the sly, was Scrum Master of a small team. He was good at this but capable of much more. I invited him to be the Delivery Manager on the programme I was running at the time.
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Tag Archives: feel
Product Owner – leader, facilitator or unnecessary overhead?
Daniel Markham thinks the Product Owner is “the perfect scam in the Agile community” and recommends getting rid of the role. This might work for highly functioning teams working in highly functioning organisations, but for not normal teams. For normal teams in normal organisations the Product Owner performs a valuable role as a facilitator and, if you are lucky, a leader.
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I Only Trust Architects That Code
I only trust architects that code. Who have skin in the game. Who will suffer personally if they make the wrong architectural decisions. Who will dive in to fix any problems that arise from their decisions.
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Choose your Lean-Agile coaches wisely; watch for Organisational Psychopaths
I’m a big fan of Lean-Agile coaches and have a list of folk that I trust to help me run transformation initiatives. But there are some cowboys out there and, at the extreme, folk who pitch themselves as coaches but are really organisational psychopaths. That is why I vet my coaches.
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Deming wasn’t a fan of Management by Walking Around
W. Edwards Deming, credited with launching the Total Quality Management movement, wasn’t a fan of Management by Walking Around.
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TPM – Project Manager who is technical or technical person who manages?
I squirm when I see a job description for a “Technical Project Manager (TPM)”. My experience is that an organisation advertising for a TPM is often confused about what they are looking for. Do they mean a project manager who is technical or a technical person who provides some coordination? Often you’ll find both types in the same “project management” team.
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I always work with a “Product Owner”; never a “Scrum Product Owner”
I’ve previously had a poke at the Scrum Product Owner role when I called it Scrum’s Uber-Pig. Now I have to admit that, although I always work with a “Product Owner”, I never work with a “Scrum Product Owner”. In fact, given my own responsibilities, I can never work with a Scrum Product Owner.
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Trust Needs to be Earned
Jim, a previous boss of mine, once said to me “You don’t trust anybody”. It isn’t true. I do trust people but I don’t give my trust away easily. People have to earn it. And I don’t trust categorically – there is always a limit to my trust. As the programme manager I can’t afford to offer more.
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3 Million Pound Budget Cut! Don’t Panic and Go Look for Help
When dealing with major crisis, like the 3 million pound budget cut I faced once, the first you have you have to remember is: Don’t panic, you are not alone.
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I always work with a Technical Lead. Always
They might be called an Architect or a Tech Lead or just “Bob” but I always work closely with a senior technical person.
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