Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” provides frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams see problems and resolve risks and manage their product development.

She was the agileconnection.com technical editor for six years. Johanna is the author of these books:

From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver (with Mark Kilby)
Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver
Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, 2nd edition
Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
Project Portfolio Tips: Twelve Ideas for Focusing on the Work You Need to Start & Finish
Diving for Hidden Treasures: Finding the Value in Your Project Portfolio (with Jutta Eckstein)
Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost
Manage Your Job Search
Hiring Geeks That Fit
The 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby)

Read her blog and other articles on her site, jrothman.com. She also writes a personal blog on createadaptablelife.com.

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All Stories by Johanna Rothman

The Problem with Expectations for Agile Teams

Too many people sell agile as a way to get better, faster, cheaper. But the problem with setting these high expectations for agile teams is that we too often neglect the roles of and expectations for agile managers. Managers are responsible for creating the environment in which people can deliver great work.

Why Process Standardization Is a Terrible Idea

Having a standard process everyone uses makes sense in theory. You could compare metrics and progress across teams and projects. But it practice, it becomes like comparing apples and oranges. Teams aren't all the same, and neither are projects. Each team need its own optimized way to deliver value.

When Can You Honestly Call Yourself Agile?

If you're working more iteratively and incrementally and things are better for your team and your customers, can you call yourself agile? As long as you're improving, does it really matter what you call yourself? Johanna Rothman says yes. Unless you're following the Agile Manifesto, you aren't truly agile.

Scaling Agile: Reasonable Practices for Program Management

In a big push to scale agile, it can help to think of scaling agile as program management, or coordinating projects where the value is in the overall deliverable. Consider how you can deliver your product one small, finished bit at a time. If you deliver value as often as possible, you see real results.

Think Agile to Work Efficiently and Effectively

Of course it's important to work efficiently, without wasting time, money, or energy. But working effectively is just as important. Agile cycles between creating, testing, and getting feedback, allowing us to work in small chunks and make sure what we're producing has the most value. That's effective.

Do You Design Your Software Process for Flexibility or Repeatability?

Manufacturing design looks a lot like software: You iterate through possible solutions, and the manufacturing itself is about repeating the making process. But building software means learning about the problem as you solve parts of it. For that, you want flexibility. How do you find your ideal process?

Agile Methods for Tackling the Work You Don’t Want to Do

We all have work we don't want to do. Some of it is boring or unpleasant, but there's another type: work we don't know if we can finish to our satisfaction. It's hard to tackle a task you're not an expert at. Johanna Rothman offers two classic project management approaches to face the work you're putting off.

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