Announcing Streamline

Are you fed up with project management tools that are really task systems dressed up to use Agile nomenclature? We are, so we built something very different, from the ground up – something much better.

Here’s what inspired it: We noticed that in our Management Curriculum, we describe a range of practices that support true agility - things like critical path analysis, and focusing on OKRs and Smart Goals instead of tasks.

And then it occurred to us: There is no tool that does this – one has to do it by hand. So why don’t we create these things in a tool?

So we did. It’s called Streamline (TM).

What Is Needed

Most project tools today are really task management systems, with an “Agile” facade that enables one to still manage the old way, but call it “Agile”. That is still task-oriented management.

What is needed is a planning tool that is flow-oriented, and treats open-ended projects (“products”) as normal, and that puts the focus on what might be slowing you down. Because when things change, you need to focus on what is holding up the change, rather than on making sure that every task is done, especially since a lot of those tasks are now made irrelevant by the change of direction. Let people figure out the low-level tasks: leaders should focus on the high level objectives and the bottlenecks and other impediments to rapid flow.

Teams and individuals need control of defining the low level tasks for how to accomplish the goals they have committed to — their “smart goals”: those tasks should not be defined by a manager. But alignment is important — alignment with objectives, and transparency through key results. And team-level goals and product- and organization-level objectives and key results need to be fluid yet stay aligned — a critical challenge.

All these things should be front-and-center. In Streamline, they are.

The kind of tool needed is one that shows the critical path, and that helps people to stay aligned as changes in direction are made, at all levels. A flow-oriented tool.

Join our upcoming webinar where we will demonstrate Streamline. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/IbOee4vfSb61IvbI2nkFJA

Also, watch the short video about it: https://youtu.be/FGRZOwr_r3M

Finally, we don’t use this blog to spam our followers about our products – this notice is just to make you aware. You won’t hear more about it here very often. So if you want to be notified of things related to Streamline, join our Agile 2 Academy LinkedIn page. We shamelessly use that to notify people about our offerings, but not in a spammy or highly frequent way — in a way that merely keeps you aware.

I hope to see you at the webinar!

Cliff