Managers are people, too. They have bad-manager days. And, even on good-manager days, they can show doubt, weakness, and uncertainty. They can be vulnerable. Managers are not omnipotent. That’s why it’s critical for a manager to admit a mistake immediately.

Erich Knausenberger and Raj Shah examine the challenges of implementing earned value management and program management to implementing agile for government IT. Then, the authors propose a “blended-approach” by which government and other large entities can address these and other challenges.

As technology development programs represent some of the biggest line items on agency budgets, there should be little surprise that agile development, with its promise of a fast, lightweight, and iterative approach to delivery of value, has caught the attention of officials from across the government space as they seek to improve their programs’ productivity and effectiveness.

Anupam Kundu describes an agile-enabled framework for product managers, project portfolio managers, and IT executives to develop and maintain a dynamic and flexible product roadmap. The product wing of the digital division of a publishing house adopted this collaborative framework to to charter their product roadmap and simultaneously enable their project team to see and understand the “big picture.”