Johanna Rothman

Provides advice for managing a software design project, covering such topics as planning and using life cycles, scheduling, creating a project team, managing meetings, integrating testing, and completing a project.

Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management

Manage It!

Hiring a person for your team is the single most important decision you can make. It has long-lasting impact, whether you are the manager or a team member. Would you like to learn to hire great people? Not sure how? You need this book. Great geeks are not the same as skill-based staff. You need to analyze your culture, determine your problems, define the essentials you need in a candidate, and then you’re off and running. Great geeks adapt their knowledge to your context. One developer or technical manager is not interchangeable with another. Hiring Geeks That Fit takes the guesswork and cost out of hiring.

Hiring Geeks That Fit

Introducing readers to different ways of ordering all of the projects they are working on, "Manage Your Project Portfolio" helps to define a team's, group's, or department's mission--whether the projects include of software or hardware applications.

Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects

Manage Your Project Portfolio

Mark Kilby

Distributed agile teams have a terrible reputation. They don’t deliver “on time,” and too often, they don’t deliver what the customer needs. However, most agile teams, have at least one remote team member. And, agile approaches are here to stay. Don’t blindly apply agile practices designed for collocated teams. Instead, learn to use three mindset shifts and the agile and lean principles to create your successful distributed agile team. Use the tips and traps to help your team succeed. Leave the chaos of virtual teams behind. See how to help your distributed team succeed.

Collaborate to Deliver

From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams

Esther Derby

Great management is difficult to see as it occurs. It's possible to see the results of great management, but it's not easy to see how managers achieve those results. Great management happens in one-on-one meetings and with other managers---all in private. It's hard to learn management by example when you can't see it. You can learn to be a better manager---even a great manager---with this guide. You'll follow along as Sam, a manager just brought on board, learns the ropes and deals with his new team over the course of his first eight weeks on the job. From scheduling and managing resources to helping team members grow and prosper, you'll be there as Sam makes it happen. You'll find powerful tips covering: Delegating effectively Using feedback and goal-setting Developing influence Handling one-on-one meetings Coaching and mentoring Deciding what work to do---and what not to do ...and more. Full of tips and practical advice on the most important aspects of management, this is one of those books that can make a lasting andimmediate impact on your career.

Secrets of Great Management

Behind Closed Doors

Can virtual teams (distributed or dispersed) use agile approaches? Yes! Your virtual team can learn to collaborate and deliver value with agile and lean principles to create your team's modified practices. Use this book to learn how.

You can become an excellent manager when you manage yourself first. If you’re like most managers, you’ve never seen management excellence. You are not alone. Modern management requires we first manage ourselves—and that might be the most challenging part of management. Based on research and backed up by personal stories, you'll see how you can manage yourself. Through questions, stories, and proven options, learn how you can: Move from expert to coach. Recognize and avoid micromanagement. Support the people doing the work to solve more of their problems. Make time to think so you can be your best self. Trust the people you lead and serve. And, much more. With its question and myth, each chapter offers you options to rethink how you manage yourself. Become a modern manager. Learn to manage yourself so you and the people you lead and serve can deliver the results everyone needs.

Modern Management Made Easy, Book 1

Practical Ways to Manage Yourself

Scale collaboration, not process. If you’re trying to use agile and lean at the program level, you’ve heard of several approaches, all about scaling processes. If you duplicate what one team does for several teams, you get bloat, not delivery. Instead of scaling the process, scale everyone's collaboration. With autonomy, collaboration, and exploration, teams and program level people can decide how to apply agile and lean to their work. Learn to collaborate around deliverables, not meetings. Learn which measurements to use and how to use those measures to help people deliver more of what you want (value) and less of what you don’t want (work in progress). Create an environment of servant leadership and small-world networks. Learn to enable autonomy, collaboration, and exploration across the organization and deliver your product. Scale collaboration with agile and lean program management and deliver your product.

Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization

Agile and Lean Program Management

Is Independent Consulting Your Next Role? You've been successful inside organizations, and now it's time to extend that success to potential clients. But you don't want to be a smarmy marketer. Instead, you'd like your clients to ask for you by name. Look no further. This practical guide to building your "consulting engine" and creating systems for your business has everything you need to become a successful independent consultant. You'll learn how to: - Assess your value so you can choose which problems to solve for your ideal clients. - Attract clients with continual content marketing. - Create relationships with people across the client organization and with other consultants - Set reasonable fees. - Create and manage your intellectual property. - Learn from the engagement to reassess your value. And much more. As you consult, you can assess and change your business model for the flexibility you need for your business. Buy this book to start now. Become a successful independent consultant on your terms.

Successful Independent Consulting: Relationships That Focus on Mutual Benefit

The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People

Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds

You have too many projects, and firefighting and multitasking are keeping you from finishing any of them. You need to manage your project portfolio. This fully updated and expanded bestseller arms you with agile and lean ways to collect all your work and decide which projects you should do first, second, and never. See how to tie your work to your organization's mission and show your managers, your board, and your staff what you can accomplish and when. Picture the work you have, and make those difficult decisions, ensuring that all your strength is focused where it needs to be. All your projects and programs make up your portfolio. But how much time do you actually spend on your projects, and how much time do you spend on emergency fire drills or waste through multitasking? This book gives you insightful ways to rank all the projects you're working on and figure out the right staffing and schedule so projects get finished faster. The trick is adopting lean and agile approaches to projects, whether they're software projects, projects that include hardware, or projects that depend on chunks of functionality from other suppliers. Find out how to define the mission of your team, group, or department, with none of the buzzwords that normally accompany a mission statement. Armed with the work and the mission, you'll manage your portfolio better and make those decisions that define the true leaders in the organization. With this expanded second edition, discover how to scale project portfolio management from one team to the entire enterprise, and integrate Cost of Delay when ranking projects. Additional Kanban views provide even more ways to visualize your portfolio.

" If you have trouble estimating cost or schedule for your projects, you are not alone. The question is this: who wants the estimate and why? The definition of estimate is to guess. But too often, the people who want estimates want commitments. Instead of a commitment, you can apply practical and pragmatic approaches to developing estimates and then meet your commitments. You can provide your managers with the information they want and that you can live with. Learn how to use different words for your estimates and how to report an estimate that includes uncertainty. Learn who should and should not estimate. Learn how to update your estimate when you know more about your project. Regain estimation sanity. Learn practical and pragmatic ways to estimate schedule or cost for your projects. "

Predicting the Unpredictable

Jutta Eckstein

Does your organization value and rank projects based on estimation? Except for the shortest projects, estimation is often wrong. You don

Uncovering the Cost of Delay in Your Project Portfolio

Diving for Hidden Treasures

You think agile techniques might be for you, but your projects and organization are unique. An "out-of-the-box" agile approach won't work. Instead, unite agile and lean principles for your project. See how to design a custom approach, reap the benefits of collaboration, and deliver value. For project managers who want to use agile techniques, managers who want to start, and technical leaders who want to know more and succeed, this book is your first step toward agile project success. You've tried to use an off-the-shelf approach to agile techniques, and it's not working. Instead of a standard method or framework, work from agile and lean principles to design your own agile approach in a way that works for you. Build collaborative, cross-functional teams. See how small batch sizes and frequent delivery create an environment of trust and transparency between the team, management, and customers. Learn about the interpersonal skills that help agile teams work together so well. In addition to seeing work and knowing what "done" means, you'll see examples of many possible team-based measurements. Look at tools you can use for status reporting, and how to use those measurements to help your managers understand what agile techniques buy them. Recognize the traps that prevent agile principles from working in too many organizations, and what to do about those traps. Use agile techniques for workgroups, and see what managers can do to create and nurture an agile culture. You might be surprised at how few meetings and rituals you need to still work in an agile way. Johanna's signature frankness and humor will get you on the right track to design your agile project to succeed. What You Need:No technical expertise or experience needed, just a desire to know more about how you might use agile in your project.

Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver

Create Your Successful Agile Project

Modern Management Made Easy, Book 3

Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization

This book is a reality-based guide for modern projects. You'll learn how to recognize your project's potholes and ruts, and determine the best way to fix problems - without causing more problems. Your project can't fail. That's a lot of pressure on you, and yet you don't want to buy into any one specific process, methodology, or lifecycle. Your project is different. It doesn't fit into those neat descriptions. Manage It! will show you how to beg, borrow, and steal from the best methodologies to fit your particular project. It will help you find what works best for you and not for some mythological project that doesn't even exist. Before you know it, your project will be on track and headed to a successful conclusion.

Are you a technical person, such as a software developer, tester, writer, or project manager? You know that a job search is tough. You have to network, online and in person. You have to customize your resume for each job, so you can showcase your talent. You have to look for a culture that fits you. How do you start? Treat your job hunt like the project it is. Use agile and lean project management approaches that allow you to create a visual system. You'll increase your productivity, track your progress, evaluate your work, gain feedback, and throw out what doesn't work while building on your successes. Learn from your past career to optimize for your next step. Full of tips, stories, and humor, you'll apply practical techniques to take control of the most important project you'll ever work on: find your next best job.

Manage Your Job Search

You think agile techniques might be for you, but your projects and organization are unique. An "out-of-the-box" agile approach won't work. Instead, unite agile and lean principles for your project. See how to design a custom approach, reap the benefits of collaboration, and deliver value. For project managers who want to use agile techniques, managers who want to start, and technical leaders who want to know more and succeed, this book is your first step toward agile project success. You've tried to use an off-the-shelf approach to agile techniques, and it's not working. Instead of a standard method or framework, work from agile and lean principles to design your own agile approach in a way that works for you. Build collaborative, cross-functional teams. See how small batch sizes and frequent delivery create an environment of trust and transparency between the team, management, and customers. Learn about the interpersonal skills that help agile teams work together so well. In addition to seeing work and knowing what "done" means, you'll see examples of many possible team-based measurements. Look at tools you can use for status reporting, and how to use those measurements to help your managers understand what agile techniques buy them. Recognize the traps that prevent agile principles from working in too many organizations, and what to do about those traps. Use agile techniques for workgroups, and see what managers can do to create and nurture an agile culture. You might be surprised at how few meetings and rituals you need to still work in an agile way. Johanna's signature frankness and humor will get you on the right track to design your agile project to succeed. What You Need: No technical expertise or experience needed, just a desire to know more about how you might use agile in your project.

You can excel at managing people when you lead and serve them. You might have only seen managers try to direct and control others. You might think you can't possibly lead and serve others. Especially not with all the pressure you feel. You can. Great managers create an environment where people can do their best work. These excellent managers lead and serve others—not control or direct them. Based on research and backed up by personal stories, this book will show you how modern managers lead and serve others. Through questions and stories, learn how you can: · Change your focus from individuals to teams. · Create more capability in each person and as a team. · Create more engaged teams or workgroups. · Support people as they manage their careers and eliminate the need for performance reviews. · Support teams as they can learn to manage themselves. · And, much more. With its question and myth, each chapter offers you options to rethink how you lead and serve others. Become a modern manager. Learn to lead and serve others to deliver the results everyone needs.

Johanna Rothman

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