Most PMs in software development industry are slave drivers doubling as astrologists. Well, truth be told some of them also have client-management skills as well as specialized domain knowledge. The biggest problem, though, is that they quite often optimize their work not for long-term company success, but merely for their own promotion in the hierarchy. Indeed, as one lean software development expert once said:
One of the problems with the American style of business is not that it pursues profit above all else, but that it does not. The traditional style of corporate America is the pursuit of hierarchy above all else, and profit only appears as a necessary side effect. This is much of what I find compelling about lean and ToC: they place sustainable and profitable production as the highest goal, and organization adapts to serve that goal. Corporate America gets this backward: business exists as a franchise to fund social hierarchy and the executive lifestyle, and massive waste is created in the process.
Whether you agree or not, you can’t deny that the Lean is coming. In a few years you simply won’t find a PM job unless you know and can employ what today is still considered cutting-edge by the ignorant masses. Here are some fundamental documents on the topic.
- Famous no-bullshit no-nonsense introduction to Scrum. Describes actual process of an actual company in great details. Very inspiring and practical at the same time: Scrum And XP From The Trenches (PDF, you’ll have to create a free account on InfoQ in order to download it)
- Gentle introduction to Kanban, building up on Scrum fundamentals: 1. Striking a different bargain with the business. 2. Spreadsheet example for a small Kanban team and 3. Scrumban.
- A few years after he wrote the first item on our list, the same author wrote this comparison of Scrum with its older brother, Kanban (yes, Kanban has been known in Japan for at least 50 years now). In-depth analysis of subtle differences between the two helps understand when to apply which methodology and what elements from the two can be combined to achieve better result: Kanban and Scrum, making the most of both (a PDF again)
- A 21-page official summmary of Scrum’s roles, activities and artifacts, directly from the creators of Srum. Since Scrum is often mixed with XP, Kanban, and adapted to enterprise’s situation, this document serves as the standard model to check your implementation against. The idea is to prevent people from getting disappointed with Scrum after they watered it down with other elements while still expecting the same great results: The Scrum Guide (PDF)
- A simple and well-defined methodology for prioritizing the backlog: Priority Filter
- How to handle bugs in a Kanban system: Accounting for Bugs and Rework
