How to Develop a Probabilistic Mindset to Enable Reliable Delivery Commitments
Developing a probabilistic mindset is the ultimate secret to managing risks effectively and making reliable delivery commitments. Making probabilistic forecasts helps us maintain high levels of customer and stakeholder trust, satisfaction and retention. It also allows us to define service…
Why Your Delivery Predictions Will Always Be Wrong if You Keep Mapping Story Points to Hours
When it comes to making delivery commitments, mapping story points to hours to estimate your work is a terrible piece of advice. In fact, there is a very simple exercise that can be used to reveal this paradox. Bar Vaccin…
How to Meet Your Long-Term Goals Using Continuous Forecasting
Continuous forecasting is ultimately the best strategy that you can implement to stay on track and keep your commitments in the long run. When my husband and I moved to Belgium, about 8 years ago, I fell in love with…
5 Work Management Tips to Avoid Project Delays
Managing the flow of work effectively and staying on top of the obstacles that hinder your performance is the cornerstone to avoiding project delays. If you’ve committed to a project deadline and along the way you’ve realized you won’t be…
Release Planning: How to Decide How Much Work to Commit to In Your Next Release Without Counting Hours (or Story Points)
Release planning is essential to fulfilling the expectations of both your customers and your teams. However, often the approaches we use to create a release plan are inherently unreliable. One of the senior managers that I’m currently consulting came to…
When is the Right Time to Say “Yes” to New Commitments?
Saying “Yes” to the right commitments (and “No” to the wrong ones) is all about making reliable decisions on what work to take on next. These are paramount to managing a steady flow of work and meeting your customers’ expectations….
Keep Your Teddy Bear! Introducing Probabilistic Forecasting to Your Team
When it comes to introducing probabilistic forecasting, it is paramount that you tackle any resistance head-on. Do you have kids? My son David is 4 years old, and my daughter Louise is now 6. She will start first grade in…
Why Using Averages to Make Delivery Predictions Will Land You in Hot Water
Often, managers use average delivery times to make future predictions. Even though this method is intuitive and widely spread, making delivery commitments based on averages is not reliable. Let’s explore the challenges that come with this approach. What Are Delivery…
How to Make Commitments for New Teams using Probabilistic Forecasting
Often, new projects start with a team that just has been brought together, and it’s a constant struggle for managers to make realistic commitments for new teams. When the team has never worked together before, using historical data to make…
How to Stay on Track with Your Commitments & Enable a Supportive Environment
Whether you’re managing your projects or working against the wire to meet a deadline, it is crucial to keep tracking your progress so that, if you go off track, you can quickly adjust the direction you’re heading in, meet your…
