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

What Are You Measuring?

Many teams do single-point measurements in their projects. But that doesn't give you a good long-term picture. When you look at multiple-dimension measurements—especially trends over time—you learn more. You can take those trends into a retrospective to investigate how your team could work better.

What Do You Do When You’re Stuck on a Problem?

Some problems we can resolve on our own in a couple of minutes. Some take more time, or we can’t resolve them alone. What do you do then? Johanna Rothman suggests scheduling a timebox to find a solution alone, then if that doesn't work, using one of the ideas in this story to "unstick" yourself.

Become an Estimation Leader

Single-point estimates, whether they are for a budget or a schedule, are never correct. Things happen. Demanding that your team provide you an exact number and then treating that as a guarantee is not being a good manager—or being agile. What if you could provide a different estimation leadership?

How Much Time Do You Spend Doing Your Job versus Learning Your Job?

When was the most recent time you decided to learn something specific about your job? Many organizations do not build time in for learning in the workday. Instead of thinking you're too busy doing your job to take time to learn, ask yourself if you can incorporate learning into everything you do.

What Drives Your Behavior at Work?

Do you know what drives your behavior at work? Is it the sheer fun of programming or testing? Is it about serving customers or finding solutions to problems? Think about your mission and consider your principles when you debate potential risks and outcomes. Then, you can start exercising leadership.

Who Is Responsible for Happiness?

No one can take full responsibility for another person's happiness. However, a manager can create an environment in which a team can thrive, and that leads to happy environments. Being a servant leader means you don’t micromanage; you manage for outcomes. Is team happiness part of your culture?

Let’s Stop Discussing Post-Agile: We Still Can’t Agree on Agile

Some people in the software world feel that agile focuses too much on problems of the past. These people have moved on to what's being called post-agile, which shakes up the process. Johanna Rothman, however, thinks they're getting ahead of themselves—first, we need to keep working to achieve agile.

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