Catching Back Up…

I can’t believe it has been over two weeks since I did my last blog post. Longer than that if you are an Agile Chronicles reader. The past few weeks have been a bit nuts.

As you guys know… the week before last I was in Vegas to do my Agile PMP talk. The talk went well but it is always entertaining to see how the dynamic in the room changes depending on who decides to speak up. I need to get better at avoiding language that can set people off ;-) Anyway… every time I get to deliver this presentation in front of people it helps sharpen the message.

The Agile PMP talk just got picked up by the PMI Global Congress in October… so I better get better fast. I am not expecting that crowd to show any mercy!

Last week I was with my two older boys at Rainey Mountain Scout Camp. Camp sure has changed since I was a kid. I didn’t have a cell signal the whole week but there were several wifi hotspots around so I was not without some connectivity. After getting the troop off to classes… I spent each morning online and then each afternoon hiking in the North Georgia mountains. I would rather sleep in a tent than a swanky hotel… so life was good.

Before I left… we talked a bit about how it is so easy to get focused on how we are getting work done and to lose focus on what we are actually delivering. That problem has to be pretty universal… it applies to software teams and complex organizations… it also applies to scout troops. Are we here to build committees and sign paperwork or to help boys become young men? When we start focusing on how things are going to get done… it is easy to lose focus on what is really important. But… I digress.

Some of my writing focus lately has been directed in places other than this blog:

Next month I am publishing my first executive report for the Cutter Consortium. I did the report with my good friend Dennis Stevens. Dennis is a really smart guy and we pushed each other on the ideas in this paper. The report is only available to Cutter Consortium subscribers but maybe we’ll have a raffle here on Leading Agile to give out a hard copy.

I’ve also done a short whitepaper for VersionOne on the role of the Agile Project Manager. It is an introductory piece but you guys might want to check it out. The paper talks not so much about Agile Project Management… but more about the new skills a Project Manager needs in an agile environment and how they need to think about their role a little differently. This paper can be downloaded for the low, low cost of giving the VersionOne sales team your contact information.

Lastly, keep your eyes peeled for a screen cast I put together on agile adoption. Naming talks is not really my strong suit. The screen cast is on adopting agile… but more fundamentally it is about teams… and how to build organizations around teams… and how to decide what teams work on… and how to throttle work through the organization in a way that creates flow. So while this is an agile talk… it also hits on things like capability analyis and lean scheduling in the enterprise.

I’ll shoot a link once we have the presentation up and publicly available. Hopefully, I’ll get back in the groove of writing this week… still have lot’s to say ;-)