Estimating – Leading Answers

January 16, 2021October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Estimating, Games, Metrics, Risk Management, Teams, Visual Learning

Creating a Risk-Adjusted Backlog

This article explains what a risk-adjusted backlog is, why they are useful, how to create one and how teams work with them. What is a Risk-Adjusted Backlog? A risk-adjusted backlog is a backlog that contains activities relating to managing risk in addition to the usual features associated with delivering value. Agile projects typically prioritize the backlog based on business value or perceived needs. The Product Owner or business representative prioritizes the backlog elevating the highest value features to the top, so they get delivered first. Taking an Economic View of Decision Making Prioritizing based on business value is an example of the lean concept of ‘Taking an Economic View of Decision Making.’ In deciding which feature to develop first, those […]

August 25, 2020Agile Project Management, Estimating, Metrics, Planning, Teams

Estimating Agile Projects…Or Not

Project managers generally like plans and estimates so we can forecast when things should be done and how much they may cost. It helps manage client expectations and answer the type of questions they ask, such as "When will it be done?" and "How much will it cost?" So, when project managers hear about ideas such as "let's stop estimating," it can trigger a knee-jerk reaction. It sounds lazy and avoiding the hard work of having to estimate. It can seem like people want to shirk their responsibility and accountability. First, those lazy agilists wanted to stop doing documentation; now they want to stop estimating too! There has been a debate raging since 2012 about the use and value of […]

May 1, 2020October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Estimating, Leadership, Metrics, Personal Agility, Tailoring Approaches, Teams

Playing in the Gray of Hybrid

Gray areas occupy the transition from one world to the next. Neither black nor white, predictive nor agile, project managers are increasingly finding themselves in the gray area of hybrid project management. This can make us feel uncomfortable since we are neither faithfully following either approach—instead living a compromise between seemingly different value systems. We could get uncomfortable, guarded and hesitant to embrace the reality we face. Or, we could welcome it, use it to our advantage and share the benefits/trade-offs with anyone willing to listen. This second option of embracing, using and sharing is “playing in the gray area,” a term I learned at a recent workshop I was giving. It nicely summarizes the idea of accepting and making […]

March 14, 2019October 13, 2026Agile Project Management, Estimating, Planning, Risk Management

New PM – The What?, Why?, and How? of Project Charters

Creating a great project charter is an art and a science. Anyone new to the profession of project management needs to learn how to create a project charter. It is not only an important early project deliverable, but it also sets the tone and lays out the foundation for the rest of the project. While we can spend our careers improving our ability to craft effective project charters, we can get to a 70% good-enough state by addressing some basic topics. This article explains those basics.

March 7, 2019October 27, 2025Agile Project Management, Estimating, Planning, Risk Management, Tailoring Approaches

New PM, New Choices

(Over at ProjectManagement.com January’s theme was “New PMs”. I wrote this article about the choices of approach we have and ways for new PMs to navigate them.) These days, new project managers are exposed to conflicting guidance. On the one hand, there is a plethora of traditional “Plan the work, work the plan” literature. On the other, media is full of light-touch, self-organizing team advice. These sets of recommendations often appear to be at odds, so what is the new PM to do? Consultants will say, “Oh, it depends…” and start a lengthy (aka expensive) conversation. I say let’s examine the basics so we can make an informed decision ourselves. The goals of planning, scheduling, and tracking are universal. We need to understand what […]

November 6, 2016Agile Project Management, Estimating, Leadership, Metrics, Planning, Risk Management, Teams

When Outsourcing Makes Sense

Disclaimer: This article is based on my personal experience of software project development work over a 25 year period running a mixture of local projects, outsourced projects and hybrid models. The data is my own and subjective, but supported by 1,000’s of industry peers I question while delivering training courses for the PMI. I do not work for a local based or outsourcing based company, I have nothing to gain from favoring either approach, but I hope these thoughts are useful for determining some of the pro’s, con’s, true costs and circumstances when outsourcing is better or worse than local development. To the uninitiated, outsourcing seems like a great idea. Software engineers are expensive in many countries but much cheaper […]

August 18, 2015October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Books, Estimating, Events, Leadership, Lean, Metrics, Planning, Risk Management, Teams

Agile Innovation

Psst, this is your conscious, I am here to remind you about something you have thought about, but then hid away in the back of your mind. Lots of this agile stuff is hypocritical, it preaches evolution and change, but then we ask the same old three questions at standup every day. Also, why must we have standup every day, isn’t that kind of prescriptive? Agile methods are supposed to facilitate innovation through iterative development followed by inspection and adaption. They practice the scientific method of measurement and feedback on products and team work; so why are the agile practices themselves magically exempt from this precious evolution? I believe there are two main reasons; first off, it is to protect […]

March 15, 2015Agile Project Management, Estimating, Metrics, Planning, Teams

Quality Project Management

How do we define quality as a project manager? Is it managing a project really well, or managing a successful project? How about managing a successful project really well, that sounds pretty good. However it poses the next question: What is a successful project? Let’s look at some examples of project success, failure and ambiguity. Apollo 13 Apollo 13, the third manned mission by NASA intended to land on the moon that experienced electrical problems 2 days after liftoff. An explosion occurred resulting in the loss of oxygen and power and the "Houston, we've had a problem" quote from astronaut, James Lovell (that is widely misquoted as, "Houston, we have a problem".) The crew shut down the Command Module […]

September 23, 2012Agile Project Management, Estimating, Leadership, Metrics, Planning, Risk Management, Teams

Go Talk To Your Stakeholders

As a PM, what is the most effective thing you can do for your project in the next hour? (After finishing this article, of course!) I would suggest speaking to your project team members and business representatives about where their concerns lie and what they believe the biggest risks for the project are. The reason being that while tarting up a WBS or re-leveling a project plan might be familiar and comfortable (where you are a master of your own domain), it really amounts to nothing if your project is heading for trouble. Like rearranging deck chairs when you should be looking for icebergs, there are better uses of your time. The frequency and magnitude of IT project failures are […]

July 13, 2012October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Estimating, Events, Games, Metrics, Planning, Risk Management, Teams

Collaborative Games for Risk Management – Part 2

This is the last post in a series on agile risk management. The first looked at the opportunities agile methods offer for proactive risk management, while the second examined the benefits of engaging the whole team in risk management through collaborative games. The last instalment walked through the first three games covering: 1. Risk management planning2. Risk Identification3. Qualitative Risk Analysis This month we look at the final three sets of collaborative team activities that cover: 4. Quantitative Risk Analysis5. Risk Response Planning (and Doing!)6. Monitoring and Controlling Risks The exercises we will examine are Today’s Forecast — Quantitative Risk Analysis Dragons’ Den — next best dollar spent Battle Bots — simulations Backlog Injector — Plan Risk Responses Junction Function […]