Johanna Rothman vs. The Pandemic

 Johanna Rothman is one of the most inspiring people I know. Usually she writes a book a year, but with the pandemic and all the chaos that has thrown into the mix, this year she wrote five.

In this interview on ProjectManagement.com, Johanna and I discuss her new books and catch up on a wide range of topics including staying productive and inspired, leading and empowering people, how being distributed has changed under Covid-19, not losing your *** during the pandemic, and what it might mean for the working world if decide we don't actually need all those office buildings anymore.

You can find the interview and links to all her new books here.

Managing Up with Dhaval Panchal

Two similar common situations raised by students in class...

How can you be Product Owner when your boss keeps trying to do your job for you? How can you be ScrumMaster when the owner of the company keeps storming in demanding mid-sprint changes, additions, etc. And how do you manage the people who are higher up in the food chain than you are?

EvolveAgility Founder, Dhaval Panchal, joined me for a podcast to discuss these situations, how tricky they can be to navigate, and how you can "coach" your managers to behave in a way that helps, not hinders, your team's ability to deliver.

The podcast is here.

Podcast Interview w/ Ron Lichty, author of Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams

Click here to go straight to the podcast.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Ron Lichty, Agile throught leader co-author and of Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams. One of the great things about the books is that Ron and his co-author Mickey W. Mantle have culled their collective experience and offered up a set of tools they have found useful over the years in working on software projects.

Ron and Mickey take the approach that software developers are a unique group within the knowledge workforce and that they require an adjustment in how we treat them, how they treat each other and what we can do to help them work with non-developers.

One of Ron’s current areas of focus is rooted in the question of “Why do we need managers if Agile teams are supposed to be self organizing?” Ron’s has found that only about 5% of software managers have had actual training in how to manage people. We basically just expect developers to be able to move into a managing role and just know how to do it based on their experience in not being a manager. Ron looks at the critical role that management can make in helping companies transform to Agile and the importance in making sure that they are trained both in management AND in how Agile works so that they can be better prepared to help, rather than impede the Agile teams as they are getting off the ground.

You can learn more about Ron, or the tools he and Mickey have put together, you can find them on his website RonLichty.com
You can find the podcast interview here.
Ron’s book “Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams” can be found here.