Understanding Flow Distribution – Getting Your Priorities Straight

“Decision to do one thing is a decision to delay something else” – Dominica DeGrandis, Making Work Visible Flow Distribution is the proportion of Flow items (features, defects, debt, risk) in a specific value stream that can be adjusted depending on the need to maximize business value. Set by the workers who know best about...

Officials Say True UK Unemployment Rate Should Be Higher

The headline figures on the UK employment rate suggest that the country is experiencing its lowest unemployment since records began. This is despite the challenges being posed by international trade tensions and the Brexit drama Britain has faced for the past few years. The fact that the UK workforce is also at last seeing real...

4 Key Actions for Getting your Goals in a Row

Whether you’re aware of it or not, most of your waking hours are filled up with tasks — both big and small ones. These tasks can be anything: from driving to work every morning, to fixing yourself a healthy meal or reviewing a document for work. No matter the type of job you’re performing, it’s...

Lean Budgeting, Part 1: The Limitations of Traditional, Project-Based Budgets

Funding practices – the way businesses allocate budgets internally – are pretty important: They largely determine which projects get prioritized, how teams are structured, and how ROI is measured. If your organization is trying to implement agility at scale, you’ll quickly discover that there are limitations to traditional, project-based budgets and their associated funding practices...

Why Execs Resist PM Implementation & How to Change Their Minds

Resistance to change isn’t always just hard-nosed recalcitrance. Most of the time, it comes from a place of strategic concern. Consider the questions: Is this really the best use of our resources considering how tight things are already? How can we be certain that the payoff is going to be worth the investment? Are we...

Flow Load – Is Demand Outweighing Capacity?

“Too much WIP is the enemy of productivity,” – Dominica DeGrandis, author of Making Work Visible, and Principal Flow Advisor at Tasktop The happiness and engagement of the people who plan, build and deliver software has a direct correlation on the productivity and quality of their work. Combined with the rise of burnout in IT...

5 Reasons to Pursue a PM Career

Considering potential career paths – either when starting out or looking to switch lanes – can be a difficult process. There are many variables to consider, and often too many unknowns involved to ever make a perfect decision. The more information you have, the better, helping you to see how you would fit into a...

How Do You Conduct Resource Planning as a Savvy PMO?

Today’s enterprises are increasingly looking to the PMO to boost the bottom line. Inadequate resource planning practices make it difficult to quickly deliver innovative products, services, and customer experiences. “The risk of poor capacity is the inability to resource projects. We have a ‘need for speed’ and need the right resources at the right time...

A Day in the Life of… a Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead

Meet Jordi Böhme! He’s one of our Senior Software Engineers and Team Leads who works remotely in Germany. We spoke to him about working in a different timezone and the first time he ever saw a skunk.  How do you start your day before work? Probably very different from most other Tasktopians; I’m a remote...

Why It’s OK to Say “I Don’t Know” (& How to Do It Productively)

Having to say “I don’t know” can elicit feelings of anxiety and inadequacy at work, like all of your hard work will be for nothing if you can’t answer whatever specific question has been thrown at you. This may stem from childhood, when not knowing what the teacher had just mentioned five minutes before would...