Managing Product Development is a blog run by Johanna Rothman, a portal for a 35-year veteran of a variety of projects and programmes for both software and hardware. Rothman, who holds two Bachelor’s Degrees from the University of Vermont and an MSc in Systems Engineering from Boston University, premiered Managing Product Development in February 2003, and has maintained a policy of a new weekly post.

And with four decades in PPM under her belt, Johanna felt MPD would be a great spot to discover where management goes bad and needs patched up.

“Because people do funny things in projects and when they manage people–things they think will help, but don’t,” she says. “If I can help them see that what they are doing is counter-productive, and provide them alternatives, I’ve done my job.

“Management, especially good management, is hard to do. This blog is for people who want to think about how they manage people, projects, and risk.”

Johanna is a published author of a variety of white papers in project management, as well as five books, including

• Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management (Jolt Productivity Award winner)
• Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
• Manage Your Job Search (which, as Johanna puts it, “Is in beta and is a way to use personal Kanban and agile to manage your job search project.”)

Johanna finds the motivation to post on MPD through conversations she’s had in her daily life, inspiration from ideas she comes across on her reading list, or as part of a book she is working on.

“The blog is intended for technical leaders, project managers, program managers and managers,” she says. “I’ve been consulting for the past 17 years, helping projects succeed. Before that, I was inside organizations starting as a software developer, tester, project manager, program manager, manager, and senior manager. I’ve seen the good, bad, and ugly of projects.”

Johanna cited two different posts as MPD’s most widely read:

• Why Does Management Care About Velocity?
• Estimating the Unknown: Dates or Budgets, Part 1
• Do You Have Feature-itis?
• Functional Managers Acting as Scrum Masters: Not a Good Idea
• Thoughts on Infrastructure, Technical Debt, and Automated Test Framework

Three other posts serve as her personal favourites in the MPD circle:

• Geographically Distributed Agile Teams Have Choices for Their Lifecycles
• Thoughts on Infrastructure, Technical Debt, and Automated Test Framework
• Why Focus on Continuous Integration for Programs?

Follow Johanna Rothman and new posts on the Managing Product Development blog on Twitter @johannarothman

URL: http://www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd/

RSS Feed: http://www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd/feed

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