New England Software Symposium - No Fluff Just Stuff
NFJS2018

New England Software Symposium

September 28 - 30, 2018

Think Big, Plan Small: How to Use Continual Planning

Saturday - Sep 29 9:00 AM EDT - CONCORD

Many agile teams (and programs) attempt to plan for an entire quarter at a time. Something changes—a better product opportunity, or a product development problem—and the quarter’s plan is not just at risk. That plan is now impossible. Instead of quarterly planning, consider continual planning. Continual planning allows a project or a program to use small deliverables to plan for the near future and replan often to deliver the most value.

  1. About roadmaps and what they are supposed to show us
  2. Problems with Big Planning
  3. Rolling wave planning at any wavelength
  4. When things change and what happens to the roadmap
  5. How Minimum Viable Experiments and Minimum Viable Products help and the difference between them.
  6. Three options for alternate planning, including lean roadmapping
  7. Problems big planning masks and how to use smaller planning to everyone's benefit
Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman

Speaker, Consultant, Author for managing product development

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.