Johanna Rothman

By Johanna Rothman

Many software managers came to management through the technical ranks. Although they may have had plenty of technical training and mentoring, they frequently have to learn management skills the hard way, through trial and error. Johanna will describe some technical management tips and tricks learned through trial and error, focusing on software managers and their particular issues.

You'll learn about a manager's job, how to create an effective work environment, and how you can help people do their best work.

This presentation is good for agile and non-agile managers.

By Johanna Rothman

Feel as if you can't get anything done? More projects than time to do them? Crises out the wazoo? Then it's time to consider another approach: managing your project portfolio. You can organize your projects and and evaluate them without getting buried under a mountain of statistics.

Johanna will discuss how to collect all your work, decide which projects you should do first, second—and never. You’ll see how lean and agile approaches fit managing the project portfolio and how they make it easy. We’ll discuss how to tie your work to your organization’s mission and show your board, your managers, and your staff what you can accomplish and when. You’ll get a better view of the work you have, and learn how to make those difficult decisions, ensuring that all your strength is focused where it needs to be.

By Johanna Rothman

Have you ever waited weeks for one piece of functionality so you could release a large project? Have you been in the situation where the software is waiting for the hardware? Or, where the database admin held up the entire release because his work wasn’t coordinated with the feature-based teams? Program management is the art of coordinating several sub-projects to a common objective. Until the parts are assembled into the whole, the parts have no value to the organization.

Agile approaches help manage risk for projects, and we can scale agile approaches to programs. In this session, we will discuss several options for how to create a program and run it in an agile way. We’ll examine how to report and obtain status, how to create and maintain a coherent architecture, and how to coordinate teams who are focused on their sub-project deliverables to create an overall deliverable for the organization. We’ll examine the issues of how to organize the teams, synchronize iterations, and know when you are ready to release.

Whether you work in an organization that uses agile methods or more traditional approaches, you can learn new ideas about managing programs.

By Johanna Rothman

Many of us have experienced sports coaches, where they helped us stretch for the crawl, turn in dance, or catch a ball. But sports coaching tends to be just one kind of coaching—and not necessarily the kinds of coaching you need to provide or hear at work.

Coaching is one of the most important--and most difficult--responsibilities of leaders. Too often, people struggle and fail when it comes to coaching others. Coaches may try to impose their style on someone else for whom it doesn’t fit. Some coaches try to transfer “best practices” regardless of how well they fit the organization. Other coaches talk too much.

Coaching is a two-way relationship between a coach and the coachee. But not all the learning is on the coachee’s side. If a coach is not learning as he or she proceeds with the coaching, the coach shortchanges the coachee.

We will explore how to recognize when you are the right coach--and when you’re not. We will explore multiple coaching techniques so you can select the ones that most fit you, the other person, and the context. We will practice coaching in several ways and see which ones you prefer, and which ones you might need to practice more. And we’ll see how to learn as you coach.