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Johanna’s Books
Monthly Archives: March 2004
Optimizing for 100% Productivity Isn’t
A client was optimizing for what they thought was the bottleneck in their software development: the testers. In the assessment, I gathered some quantitative data about how long the testers took to test and how long it took for … Continue reading
Posted in project management
Tagged capacity, productivity, project portfolio management, project team
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Ask for More Value
David Anderson has an intriguing post, Lawyers, Unit Tests and Performance Reviews. David says “Individual team members can be set specific goals and behavior objectives…” and gives examples. I prefer that team members set their own goals with input from … Continue reading
Multiprojecting: The Illusion of Progress
I have a column this week on Stickyminds, Multiprojecting: The Illusion of Progress. Thank you Frank Patrick, for naming this kind of multi-tasking (and for reviewing the work-in-progress). Feel free to comment on Stickyminds, unless you want to comment here.
Posted in Stickyminds columns
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Announcement: Corrective Action Handbook is Available
About 15 months ago, Denise Robitaille and I met for lunch. Denise was explaining how she helped her clients implement a reasonable corrective action program. I explained how I’d helped some of my clients figure out what was really … Continue reading
Program Management: Multiple Projects With Multiple Deliverables
Program management is the art of managing an effort of multiple projects with multiple deliverables. If you google “Program Management,” you’ll see a bunch of interesting posts, including Chris Pratley’s Program Management. To me, Chris is describing project management, … Continue reading
Release Criteria Define What “Done” Means
Want to make sure you complete your project as early as possible? Define release criteria. Release criteria are the few critically important objective criteria that define what “done” means for your project. Sometimes, it’s a combination of date, defects, … Continue reading
Posted in release criteria
Tagged project management, project success, project team, release criteria
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Methodologies and Lifecycles
In response to my most recent Pragmatic Manager (about shortening project startup times), a colleague wrote: “I am working on a lifecycle definition team in my department and finally convinced the team that Agile Development was a Methodology using … Continue reading
Integrity is the Most Important Requirement in a Manager
I’ve been thinking about Martha Stewart and her felony conviction this past weekend. I use this quote in the hiring book: “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and … Continue reading
Why Defects/KLOC Doesn’t Supply Enough Information about Product Quality
A colleague emailed me a few days ago, and asked “for a code base with a [given size], what can we expect to see for numbers of defects per KLOC (given the actual industry average or given what the … Continue reading
The Difference Between Project Managers and Developers
Joel’s discussion of project managers (MS calls them program managers) and developers got me to thinking about the differences between project managers and developers. The difference between project managers and developers is where they deal with complexity and decision-making. … Continue reading
Posted in project management
Tagged management, product development, project management
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