You have a $5 Million idea. Your tech team tells you it will take 9 months and cost $750k to find out if it even works. So you kill the idea. You choose inaction over innovation. You are not failing at innovation...you are failing at risk management. Fluent PM Playbook #26: The 7-Day Profit Test Fix As an MBA and a PSM, my job is to de-risk your big ideas. We don’t build the $750k feature to test a theory. We build a $10k experiment to validate the profit. My playbook: The 7-Day Profit Test....
8 days ago • 1 min read
You just left a strategy meeting. You used words like synergy, disruption and pivot. So what's the problem? Your execution team just heard: "Go waste 5 days figuring out what the boss meant." The space between the boardroom and the backlog is where the budget bleeds. Fluent PM Playbook #24: The Buzzword -> Blueprint Fix As a TEFL-certified communication expert, I don’t let strategy stay abstract. I force it into the Buzzword -> Blueprint formula. A buzzword is a vague wish. A blueprint is an...
10 days ago • 1 min read
The biggest threat to your team's speed isn't a bug. And it isn't technical debt. It's the Good Idea Fairy. And usually, that fairy is you! You walk in on a Wednesday and say, "Hey, can we just make this one quick tweak? It will only take an hour." You think you added 1 hour of work. You actually took away 2 days of velocity. Fluent PM Playbook #23: The Sprint Lock Fix As a Professional Scrum Master (PSM), I enforce the Sprint Lock. When we commit to a 2-week sprint...the scope is locked....
11 days ago • 1 min read
Your team is building a Ferrari.Your customer just needs a reliable car.Now you are 6 weeks late and 40% over budget because your team is adding unnecessary features your customer never asked for.You are not building a product...you are building your engineer's resume on your dime. Fluent PM Playbook #22: The Cool Features Fix As an MBA and a PSM, I am ruthless about one thing: Minimum Viable Product. “Viable” doesn’t mean “buggy.” It means: it solves the one business problem we’re being paid...
12 days ago • 1 min read
You wake up to 50 new messages from your team in Europe. Your QA lead in India says the build is broken. Your US team hasn't even logged on yet. This sounds like you are running a 24-hour chaos-engine. Fluent PM Playbook #22: The Single Source of Truth Fix As a specialist in global and cross-functional teams, I see this all the time. The problem isn’t the time zones…it’s the lack of a Single Source of Truth. When a team is distributed throughout the globe, you can’t rely on synced meetings....
15 days ago • 1 min read
Your $1.5M/year engineering team spends 10 hours a week in Agile ceremonies. You are not paying them to talk about work. You are paying them to ship it. You don't have an Agile team. You have a very expensive talking club. Fluent PM Playbook #21: The Execution System Fix As a Professional Scrum Master (PSM), I am the ruthless guardian of my team’s focus. Agile isn’t the problem. Bad facilitation is. My meetings are not discussions. They are high-speed execution systems. The Daily Stand Up:...
16 days ago • 1 min read
Your team just spent 3 months and $500k on a 'game-changing' new feature. You launched it yesterday to crickets. Your customers either hate it or, worse, didn't even notice it. You didn't build a 'game-changer.' You built a P&L-killer. This isn't an engineering failure...it's an alignment failure. Your team is building what they think is important and not what your customer is willing to pay for. Fluent PM Playbook #20: The Stop Guessing Fix As an MBA and a PSM, I don’t just align the team to...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Your sales team just lost a $100k deal because the prospect said your product was 'too confusing' and now your engineers are baffled. They built the features exactly as requested. Your team didn't fail to build...they were given the wrong thing to build. Fluent PM Playbook #19: The Customer Clarity Fix As a communication expert, I see this all the time. Teams build features instead of solutions. They get so focused on what they are building, they simply forget who they are building it...
18 days ago • 1 min read
Your tech team is 100% at capacity. They are busy in meetings, working on tickets and refactoring code. But, at the end of the month...zero new value has been shipped to the customer. You are not running a high-velocity team. You are running a high-activity busyness center. Fluent PM Playbook #18: The Sprint Goal Fix As a Professional Scrum Master (PSM), I don't just manage the backlog. I enforce a Sprint Goal.A Sprint Goal is a single, non-negotiable and business-focused objective for the...
18 days ago • 1 min read