As you can probably tell, I think people are the most important equation in successful product development. Good people can trump inadequate management and/or an inappropriate process. Dorset House has announced the pre-publication price for my book (available in September). I wrote a little more about this on my Hiring Technical People blog.
Dorset House has announced the pre-publication availability of my book, “Hiring Technical People.” Here’s the blurb: Hiring technical people is one of the most critical and difficult tasks that a manager can undertake. This book takes the guesswork out of hiring, and diminishes the risk of costly hiring mistakes. With the aid of step-by-step
If you’d like to hire people but you can’t because you have no open reqs, take a good long look at the people you do have. Are any of your staff prima donnas, “indispensable”, or just not doing the work? If you have people who aren’t being successful, you have several choices: Make sure you’ve
Last night at dinner, a friend said, “They love us. We’re only 4.8 FTEs, and (the rest of the organization) thinks we do the work of 6 people.” Guess what? There are 6 people. Not all of them work full time, which is why there are only 4.8 FTE (full time equivalents) for the
In a question to yesterday’s post, Bill asked about the effect of multiple ideas for problem solving: “Do readers feel they have to follow one of your multiple True Ways now? Or does the multiplicity meta-message encourage them to generate even more ideas?” Sometimes and Yes. Some people are even more impatient than I
This past weekend, my husband insisted we clean up the basement, and go through a bunch of old boxes. I discovered performance evaluations, memos, status reports, and some project plans dating back from when I started working until I started my business. I discovered a major pattern about my approach to work: Since I’ve never
I interviewed once for a QA Manager job. The position was supposed to run the SEPG and chair the corporate quality improvement team. The position was supposed to hire auditors to assess the organization against the CMM, and hire testers to test the product. In addition, the position was supposed to define test plans, and
Some of you are probably trying to plan your vacation around the project you’re on. Good luck. Every time I did that, the project was in some crucial place and my bosses asked me to consider changing my vacation. Don’t give in to their pleading. If the project is in good shape, you being
I’ve been working on an article for about a year now, trying to discuss how to decisions about which kinds of testers to hire when. The only good thing about working on an article that long is that I’m finally learning how to describe what I mean (I think). I’d like your feedback on these
I’ve been subjected to a bunch of team building activities that fell flat for me. My Last Word column in this month’s STQE talks about alternatives to team building. (See Teambuilding at Work.) Here’s the quick recipe: Choose a topic the team has a vested interest in solving. (If the people can’t come up with