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

Don't Just Work Longer—Work Smarter

People who work long hours assume they're also working hard—but that doesn't mean they're working smart. If you have a lot to do, you want to work smart—not just work a lot. How do you discover how much time spent working makes you the most productive? Run this experiment and gather some data.

Handoffs Aren't Bad—Just Think of Cooks in the Kitchen

Some people are confused by the word handoff. They think it means people have not done their jobs and other people had to cover for them. Sometimes that happens, but usually it's more like when one chef cooks his part of the meal, then hands off the plate to the next chef to finish the dish.

How Many People Should You Manage?

As a manager, you should be providing a learning environment, coaching when it's wanted, and building trusting relationships. You should dedicate yourself to the employees, and you need time to meet with them often. This can be hard to do if you're managing too many people. What's the right number?

Reduce Your Work in Progress to Make Your Whole Team More Productive

When you are a manager, you have to limit your own work in progress. If you don’t, you can’t pay attention to the most important work you have to do, which can affect your whole team. Read on for some tips about how best to manage work in progress, how transparency helps, and achieving efficiency.

Know Your Program: Which Team Are You Managing?

Some program managers whose organizations are transitioning to agile are not always clear which program team they are managing. That can be because the organization doesn’t always realize it needs more than one program team. Here, Johanna Rothman describes some program teams and when to use them.

The Cost of Continuous Integration Is Well Worth the Time

If you don’t start putting software together a little bit at a time, it gets harder the farther along you go. The cost of continuous integration sometimes can seem high, but it is often well worth the time, even on a large program. Here are some steps to help you move to more continuous integration.

Five Elements for Creating a Healthy Project Culture

In a healthy project culture, people work together to accomplish the goal. It doesn’t matter what approach is used—phase gate, iterative, incremental, or agile; health is key. Read on for five elements of a healthy project culture that can help set up your program, small or large, for success.

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