Originally published in Computerworld. Drake, a technical contributor in your group, sends you his weekly status report. He’s been reporting on this six-week task for the past six weeks: Week 1: Task 1 90% done Week 2: Task 1 95% done Week 3: Task 1 96% done Week 4: Task 1 99% done Week 5: […]
I had an email conversation with Allen, a blog reader. One of the questions he asked is “What do you know about my company?” Allen used this question as a technique to determine how much initiative a candidate has and how much they want to learn about the company. Allen has a good question. And
I spoke at a joint meeting of the RI PMI and ASQ last night. My presentation was “Predicting Project Completion.” I offered a simulation for people to try: predicting the time it would take and then sorting two decks of cards. We learned a lot and had fun. At the end of the meeting, one
If you’re like one of my readers, you only have two reqs and a perceived need for three people. It’s hard to know what to do, when you only have enough money for two people and want three (or any other case where you have N reqs and N=1 (or more!)) people. Here’s one technique
At first, when Hal posted State of the Art of Project Management — Underlying Theory is Obsolete I wasn’t sure what he meant by #9: “Project portfolio management is an excuse not to manage each project. Each project team must be set-up for success.” Now in PMO: Obsolete Before It Gets Off the Ground, I
I just read Jim Coplien’s paper about teaching design called “Close the Window and Put it On the Desktop”. He references the “Rule of Least Surprise,” which is to do the “least surprising thing.” In design, it means the user shouldn’t be surprised or confused by what the program does. But what does it
On Artima, a treasure trove of technical articles, there’s a great article How to Interview a Programmer. Note that the points the people in the article make are: Look for talent, not skills Ask them to critique something (Pete McBreen describes a small audition) Ask them to solve a problem Look at their code (always
I’m writing an article about defining the rhythm or cadence of your project and how to increase that, if you want to finish the project faster. I’m a little stuck—at least, if rewriting the whole thing three times is stuck, that’s where I am :-), so here’s another observation about project rhythms. If you watched
The Pragmatic Manager, Volume 2 #1 Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Kill Canceled Projects On the Bookshelf Announcements Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Kill Canceled Projects I’ve worked with several managers and developers who had a difficult time killing cancelled projects. One developer was
Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Decreasing Project Completion Time Announcements On the Bookshelf Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Decreasing Project Completion Time Many organizations have a minimum project duration. They can’t complete a project in less than some number of weeks or months. They