As organizations scale to more agile teams, a shift to agile program management is inevitable. In this podcast, Bob Payne sits down to discuss agile program management with Johanna Rothman, management consultant, author, and enterprise program management expert.

The goal in program management is to effectively manage several projects run by multiple teams to get the product out the door. We’re talking about big deliverables here. Johanna talks about the challenge of moving the usage of agile up to the program level. She lays out the steps a program manager can take in order to help facilitate this kind of development, including the use of a program architect, program storyboards, and cross-team collaboration.

During the conversation, Johanna also addresses the importance of a product or program team’s ability to make decisions when there are competing interests.

And finally, Bob and Johanna discuss the meaning of “done.” According to Johanna, a product isn’t done until the team can answer in the affirmative to the following three questions:

1) Does it meet the acceptance criteria, including the norms for the team?
2) Has the product been reviewed and tested?
3) Is the product deployable and installable?

Listen to Bob’s conversation with Johanna now: https://agiletoolkit.libsyn.com/agile-2010-johanna-rothman-agile-program-management.

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