Cross-departmental collaboration is one of the biggest challenges for project managers implementing Lean and Agile practices. No doubt about it. The literature on the topic, however, often prescribes intangible and impractical ways to deal with this challenge. You will read about “eliminating dependencies”, “forming cross-functional teams”, “getting rid of silos” and so on. While these […]
“How do you do capacity planning with Kanban?” – this has been a recurring question for us at Kanbanize. That is why we decided to address this topic formally through this article. When we get asked this question, it is usually one of these objectives/questions that people have: As a manager, I need to know […]
Before we jump into the profound topic of managing project dependencies, let’s set the ground for what this article covers and what it doesn’t. First, this article will not educate you on what dependencies in a project are and why they harm your organization. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely aware of the topic […]
My father taught me to play chess when I was very little, maybe four. There are many prodigy children who beat chess masters at four, but I wasn’t one of them. I was average.
My father never let me win against him, just because I was his son. He has always been
The traditional waterfall approach to building software (and other things) has been anathematized as being the worst thing that can happen to a company and has practically been banned from the industry for good. Its successor – agile has been discovered and promoted as the only way to do things properly. Is this applicable to everyone?
“A drifter discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to wake up to the fact that aliens have taken over the Earth.” If this sounds like the story of a low-budget horror film, you might have seen too many of them. I saw “They Live” as a kid and the fact that I still […]
Introducing Kanban into your team or organization does not merely transform the way you manage work. It also impacts how you, collectively as a team, look at work. The big leap forward happens when team members start to think of their work as a system, instead of seeing it as a group of individual tasks. […]
I’ve been dealing with Kanban for the past 10 years. In the beginning, it was just my work passion, then it turned out to be my company and to some extent, my life. There’s a bit of irony in this, however. Throughout this decade of learning and experimentation, I never found a project planning model […]
Once in a while, people embarrass themselves publicly. As much as I hate these events, I’m no exception. One such mini-embarrassment for me was when I asked the following question on Twitter: Although I had the best of intentions, looking at the replies made it clear that I had something to learn. My attitude was […]
Have you ever wondered why your home needs tidying up from time to time? For some reason, socks always end up on the floor, your desk is a mess and that one thing you need is buried somewhere in the closet. Objects just take the most random places in the house for no apparent reason. […]