Your CIO has two projects he wants finished in the next month. “We can share this project manager and that test team on both of these high-priority projects,” he declares confidently. “The projects are small enough that the teams should be able to make progress.” Two weeks later, the CIO realizes neither project is progressing […]
In Rethinking a Management Decision, Kevin Salwen reflects on when it’s appropriate to hire someone with a cut in pay. As I’ve moved further along in my career, I realize that there are a whole host of jobs that are just plain better than what people have now….Now, I’m wondering how much I would allow
I’ve noticed a common theme among the projects in trouble I’ve encountered over the past few months: functional milestones without deliverable milestones as a part of the functional milestone. Here are examples of functional milestones: “requirements complete,” “code complete.” These milestones raise these questions for me: How can you know something is complete when
Now that I’m back from vacation, I’m catching up on my reading. I enjoyed David Anderson’s Management versus Leadership on ‘The Apprentice’ which prompted me to think about what I would have done in Kwame’s place. It took me a long time to learn, but a manager always has the option of firing people who
Sorin asks another great question: “So please enlighten me : how do you decide, with only interviews/auditions, whether a candidate will be a good addition to a team or a disruptive element“ I’m assuming you’ve already asked questions such as, “Tell me about the project you’re on now. … What’s your role on the project?
I publish a monthly (most of the time) email newsletter, The Pragmatic Manager. The last two issues have dealt with decreasing project time, before and during the project. Clearly, I don’t remember to post notices of the emails every month, so feel free to subscribe yourself.
You’re a project manager. You have too much work to fit into a project (scope) and not enough time to do it. What do you do? Timebox. Timeboxing is a technique to fit what you can accomplish (some of the scope) into the time you have allotted. Timeboxing works when you have fixed schedule
Because I work for myself, I frequently miss things like Secretary’s Day or Boss’s Day. This year I almost missed Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work day. When the Ms. Foundation started Take Our Daughters to Work day, many colleagues poo-poohed it. “Who needs such a thing?” But a funny thing happened. Girls started
Read Bret Pettichord’s How Did the Blackout Happen? to see how cutting yourself off from data can damage your ability to perform your job.
Sorin’s comment got me thinking. How do you make the decision that a candidate’s technical skills aren’t worth the candidate’s lack of relationship, communication, listening, or some other soft skill? Esther was talking about collaborative teams, so someone who won’t or can’t collaborate is not going to work in your environment. But there are