This is Johanna Rothman's May 2025 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. Have you noticed that some teams seem to be more effective than others? Most of the time, they manage their WIP (Work in Progress). They learn together. Often, they collaborate across the organization. But the big […]| Johanna Rothman
I continue to work with people who have trouble with their agile approach. They tell me their relative estimation isn't working for them. They continue to roll over items, from sprint to sprint. They've rolled over some items for six months or longer. The people feel demoralized. And the Scrum Masters or agile project managers […]| Johanna Rothman
When Mark, my husband, and I moved into this house a decade ago, we faced the problem many other people face: what to keep and what to toss (or recycle, etc.). Mark had a particularly difficult time with the kitchen drawer that held all the old baby dishes and utensils. I wanted to toss everything […]| Johanna Rothman
Are you trying to use story points for estimation? If so, you might have encountered these problems: Story points reflect the ideal thinking of the team, not the actual experience of the team. Your managers don't want story points—they want durations and dates. In the absence of sufficient information, everyone makes up fiction (human stories) […]| Johanna Rothman
