Welcome to The Stakeholder Report, a weekly (and free) newsletter covering all things Project Management and Business Leadership. It’s published every Tuesday on LinkedIn (join here). Through a daily (workday) routine, I’ve found that I am indeed a goal-setter. The first thing I do when I log on is open…

Through a daily (workday) routine, I’ve found that I am indeed a goal-setter. The first thing I do when I log on is open up my notes app (Obsidian), create a new daily note, and check my calendars. This routine leads to daily and weekly goal setting at the onset…

Hey there, As we move into the summer months, this is your friendly reminder to start planning your resource usage/loss for your projects if you haven’t done so already. According to a recent poll, “[76] percent of respondents say they plan to travel more with their family in 2022 than…

When I see “Business Transformation,” I admit I immediately think of a company trying to become digital. While this isn’t always the case, it does resemble the path to a significant change, much like a business transformation effort could. However, rest assured, this article is not about business transformation, entirely…

If you ever find yourself walking into an ongoing project as the oncoming project manager, one of the first things you’ll want to know is how much work your team can get done in a specific amount of time. That, my friend, is the velocity (in the PM world). — It’s amazing what a few numbers can tell you about effort, or estimated effort, an entire team can accomplish. If used correctly, you’ll be able to glance at the list of tasks in your backlog, maybe do some Matt Damon Mars math, and see how long the project (or your…

The Daily Scrum aims to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog to adjust the upcoming planned work. — This quick meeting is designed exclusively for active members of the Development Team. There are several formats accepted; however, the most widely recognized is the “what I did yesterday, what I’m working on today, and my issues/blockers are…” However, there’s a growing movement to intertwine the Daily Scrum with a…

Trying to figure out a way to capture the necessity of your team to use some of their time to learn while doing? Enter the Spike of the Scaled Agile Framework. — It’s been noted that you should try to learn something new every day. It’s a point I take literally in my everyday life, both by necessity (to keep up with my kids) and my choice of profession. While I take pride in knowing everything I can about being a professional…

If you’re looking at the project ahead of you, “wondering” if you’re ready, you probably aren’t. This is where a narrowly defined list of checks comes in handy. We call it the Definition of Ready. — If you’ve been following along in order each week, you’ll find this article on the opposite spectrum of last week’s the Definition of Done. And for a good reason; where the DoD is your pre-determined list of requirements to know when you’re truly done, the Definition of Ready (DoR) is…

This is often a dreaded part of running a Scrum (or any) project, but it doesn’t have to be. So here’s the quick-n-easy on creating your Definition of Done. It was once odd to me that we need to define this. However, lessons learned from my projects have impressed upon me that what I think is done may not/is not the same as the Development Team, Product Owner, Stakeholders, nor perhaps, the Sponsor (the big cheese 🧀). That said…