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

Tips for Improving Your Geographically Distributed Agile Team

Many people on agile teams have at least one person who is not collocated. Those on collocated teams indicate that more of their projects are successful; those on far-located teams have the highest number of challenged projects. What can you do if you're part of a geographically distributed team?

How Serving Is Your Leadership?

Some managers don’t realize that they are not their titles. The value they should bring is the "plus": the management, plus their relationship with their peers, the people they manage, and the systems and environment they enable or create. If you're a manager, are you providing servant leadership?

Design Each Team’s Project to Optimize at the Program Level

If you are part of a program, it’s not enough to design your project for your team. You have to consider the needs of the program, too. Each team needs to ask itself, “How do we deliver what the rest of the program needs, as the program needs it?” Aim to meet deliverables—not control your people.

Let Your Teams Design Their Own Approaches to Agile

If you are thinking of agile as part of a program, each team has to have its own approach to agile because each team has its own risks and problems. If you treat people as adults, explain the desired results, and provide training and other resources they need, they are likely to succeed.

Project Management Is Not a Dirty Word

Some people dislike the idea of agile project managers, but for teams transitioning to agile, there is a place for management. That place is creating an environment in which the team learns how to self manage. Read on to discover how a PM should offer support and servant leadership to an agile team.

Four Principles for Designing Your New Agile Project

There are guidelines for those transitioning to agile. You have to know how your product releases and how often. Next, you should determine how complex your product is. Johanna Rothman helps you determine what type of product you have and how you can work on it while making the transition to agile.

How Management Indecision Loses Money and Hurts Your Project Portfolio

When managers can’t decide which projects to undertake, they end up making a decision—to not decide. They don’t fund the potentially transformative projects; they go with the safe bets. The difference between when a project goes on the backlog and when it's started eats into your maximum revenue.

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