Driving Agile at Scale: The Agile PMO

The success of Agile ways of working is driving the recent trend to scale it more broadly throughout the organization. Executives are eager to apply the speed and flexibility that individual teams are demonstrating to larger, more strategic initiatives. As a result, they are looking to the PMO, known for leading change management, to drive...

What Software Needs to Learn from Physical Product Delivery

In the Age of Mass Production, which began at the turn of the 20th century, we witnessed engineering organizations master complex product delivery.  Since that time, product complexity has continued to grow, fueled recently by an ever-growing number of electronic and software components. For example, in the 2000s, approximately 40 percent of a car’s cost...

Product Manager Tips to Better Organize, Prioritize, Schedule and Communicate

As a product manager, life can be quite chaotic, especially when dealing with multiple stakeholders and handling various channels of communication. Plus, with the ever-growing need for speed and innovation from organizations, it’s an understatement to say that a product manager’s schedule is only jam-packed most of the time. In such an environment where every...

How the Flow Framework® Maximizes Your Wins from Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®)

Many organizations have invested heavily or are considering investing in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) to improve their enterprise software delivery, where complex product work spans dozens of Agile development teams. Enterprises that have made strong strides down the SAFe path have trained and certified their teams, hired internal coaches, adopted new tools and implemented new...

The Pros and Cons of Banning Laptops in Meetings

Laptops and phones have become virtually omnipresent in most professional spheres and it has become the norm for staff to take either one or both into meetings with them in case they have a need to use them. A growing movement has begun however that seeks to ban the use of these in meetings, to...

Project to Product – Value Stream Networks

My review of the Project to Product book continues from Value Stream Metrics, with a tour of the Value Stream Network based on a study of no less than 308 toolchains and three more epiphanies. To avoid the spoiler, you will have to read the book for the context and the profound impact of the latter :-). The last part...

A Product Development Process for Successful Strategic Outcomes

Previously in this series, we discussed leveraging technology to resolve product portfolio challenges. In part seven of our eight part series “The Complexity of Managing Smarter, More Connected Products,” we’re offering recommendations for improving your product development process. Here, we’ll look at how successful industry leaders have focused on the development process to conquer complexity...

What Makes an Effective Team Member?

Every project’s success depends on the team that is undertaking it, no matter how skilled someone is as a project manager, without a good team around them, the project will struggle and quite possibly fail. As a project manager, knowing what makes an effective team member is a core skill that can define their career....

A Fresh Approach to Maximizing Value of Government IT

One of the specific goals of The Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) is to “promote transparency in existing IT assets and allow better planning, acquisition, and management of software licenses and IT resources.” Essentially, FITARA provides new ways to maximize the value of government IT and, at a basic level, answers the following: What...

Why we need a shared understanding of technical debt

Helping business leaders and technologists to speak the same language is a key purpose of Project to Product and the goal of the Flow Framework™. After all, both IT leaders and business executives share the same objective; to bring more value to the internal and external customers that we serve. Given the massive investment that organizations are making...