Agile and Lean Program Management

Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization

By: Johanna Rothman

Narrated by: Zoe Walrond

Scale collaboration, not process. If you're trying to use agile and lean at the program level, you've heard of several approaches, all about scaling processes. If you duplicate what one team does for several teams, you get bloat, not delivery. Instead of scaling the process, scale everyone's collaboration. With autonomy, collaboration, and exploration, teams and program level people can decide how to apply agile and lean to their work.

Learn to collaborate around deliverables, not meetings. Learn which measurements to use and how to use those measures to help people deliver more of what you want (value) and less of what you don't want (work in progress). Create an environment of servant leadership and small-world networks. Learn to enable autonomy, collaboration, and exploration across the organization and deliver your product. Scale collaboration with agile and lean program management and deliver your product.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Johanna Rothman (P)2016 Johanna Rothman

A book for project managers

Joanna delivers as always. I recommend a bookcircle for your traditional project managers and fresh agile coaches with this book. Great emphasis on delivery based planning. Thanks.

Good book with useful guidelines

The book is good, but it is hard to stay attracted to listening because it way far from story telling, but generally it was useful

Must have for Agile transition!

What made the experience of listening to Agile and Lean Program Management the most enjoyable?

In Johanna's book she is very clear in explaining what to expect and do in an agile world. I'm currently undergoing a transition from Waterfall to Agile and this book has been invaluable resource for me and our teams. One of our biggest challenges is related to managing up in the agile transformation and chapter 9 (estimating program schedule or cost) and section 10.12 (Principles) was a huge help in shaping how we message and report on progress from our transition from waterfall.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Agile and Lean Program Management?

Chapter 11 (Develop your servant leadership), this chapter really helped to open my eyes to servant leadership. It was something I've heard of, but didn't give much thought to until really understanding it from Johanna's book. This chapter was a great introduction into servant leadership and now I have added Servant Leadership to my backlog of reading/listening further into this topic.

What about Zoe Walrond’s performance did you like?

Zoe did a great job and it was very easy to listen to while driving.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I had many "Aha!" moments when listening to this book. Since we started our agile transition recently from waterfall this book really hit home.

Any additional comments?

The organization I work for is undergoing an agile transition and we've all found Rolling Rocks Downhill very helpful in understanding this transition. Johanna had written foreword of this book which lead me to find her book Agile and Lean Program Management. It's great to see these amazing agile experts & authors working together like this!

Boring and roundabout explanation

"The A team presents to the X team who present to the Y team. The C team should report back to the A team once [some process] is established."

If you work in a fast paced tech environment where the words "lean", "scrappy", or "innovative" are ever used this is NOT the book for you. If you work in a 300 year old financial institution that launches software maybe once a year then you might gain an understanding of the mess that is the company org chart from listening to this book. I have listened to 45 minute podcasts that covered more than this book has been able to communicate in the 3 hours I've been listening. Save yourself the trouble and choose something else

Fact based but DRY!

"This is my book review. It is a review of the book. It is not a book, just the review of the book. The book is not a review, it is the subject of the review. The book can exist without a review but the review is derivative and can't exist without the book. See chart."

This book may make a great reference tool but it lacked story. It was a well told glossary but lacked the essential elements of an engaging educational experience, reader emotion and empathy.

I wanted to like it and I stayed to the end, relying on "I've come this far, I'll stick with it!"