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Agile Program Management: Measurements to See Value and Delivery

Too many programs (collections of projects with one business deliverable) try to use team measurement to extrapolate to the program’s status. That doesn’t work. Teams have personal status, and you can’t add them together to understand the program state. Or, your management wants to know when you will be done, and every team uses relative estimation and you can’t understand how to “add” them all together. (You can’t.)

Instead of trying to “scale” measurements, measure what you want to see and what you don’t want to see. You can use a handful of program measurements that help everyone understand where the program is and where it’s headed. In this talk, Johanna will share program measurements—qualitative and quantitative—that show everyone the program state, and maybe when the program could be done.

  1. Measure what you want to see. Why this principle is so effective.
  2. Why you want to measure completed features, and not points of any kind.
  3. Specific quantitative measures: product backlog burnup, time to releasable deliverable, release frequency, program cumulative flow, build time, product measurements
  4. Specific qualitative measures: obstacle report, program work in progress, possible product measures also.
  5. What you should never measure.

Johanna Rothman

About Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams learn to see simple and reasonable things that might work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can decide how to adapt their product development.

With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books about many aspects of product development. She’s written these books:

  • Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility
  • Become a Successful Independent Consultant
  • Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer
  • Modern Management Made Easy series: Practical Ways to Manage Yourself; Practical Ways to Lead and Serve (Manage) Others; Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization
  • Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts
  • From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams (with Mark Kilby)
  • Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver
  • Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
  • Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, 2nd edition
  • 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)

In addition to articles and columns on various sites, Johanna writes the Managing Product Development blog on her website, jrothman.com, as well as a personal blog on createadaptablelife.com.

More About Johanna »

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Two and a half days of insightful sessions, inspiring ideas, and meeting your peers. Learn the skills and methods that will take your organization to the next level.

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