I’ve been writing pieces of the project portfolio book, and was wondering how to explain how managers get caught in the trap of having too many projects. Then I read Joe Ely’s Minimizing Work-in-Process for Knowledge Workers, and had an “aha” moment. (Well, I think I did. You let me know.) For many managers (and […]
Jurgen’s post, How to Select a Fine Technical Manager, along with the posts he responded to prompted this one. I’m not agreeing much with Jurgen today. I suspect it’s because we have very different experience. In my experience, only technical people who want to manage want to be managers–unless HR has screwed up the salary
Jurgen wrote Lesson Learned: Automate Project Evaluations a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been trying to find a nice way to explain that no, Jurgen is wrong. I can’t do it. Jurgen, You are WRONG. If anyone here is doing some form of agile or incremental or any kind of development, and you have not
For the recruiter interview series, I had a conversation with the Recruiting Animal: JR: How long have you been in the recruiting field? RA: Over ten years. JR: Do you have any specialties? RA: I’m a generalist but I have done a number ofsearches for internal auditors in recent years. I have also worked on
One of the problems I see in projects is that there is not a sufficient definition of done. For agile teams, it’s not clear what done means for a timebox. For non-agile projects, the team may not agree on what done means for a milestone or for a release. For an agile team, do you
I found my first job with the help of an on-campus recruiter, and with a local Boston-area recruiter. I found my second job through the newspaper. I’ve found all my other jobs (all of them, including my consulting engagements) via my network, which does include recruiters. That’s about 25 years of jobs. Louise Fletcher has
I publish a monthly email newsletter, the Pragmatic Manager. Last month’s topic was Timeboxes Help Multisite Teams. Let me know if you like the formatting of the page the same way I format the email newsletter, or if I should not be so fancy-dancy.
Steve Berczuk (author of Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration—I’ve only read pieces), has a great review of Manage It! One nice nugget: This book has pragmatic advice on how to make progress and issues visible, how to plan a project, and most everything else you need to help a project come to
Matt Buckland had some great comments about my post Why You Should Make Friends with Recruiters. In his post, Why you should make friends with Recruiters, Matt rebutted a couple of points (which is just fine!). He made a great point at the bottom: I’d add one major exception to the list, make friends with
I discovered two more great reviews of Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. The first is a brief explanation of the Jolt awards. Take a look at Winners of the 18th Jolt Product Excellence Awards & Recipients of the Jolt Productivity Awards. (Scroll down a bit to see what Roland Racko said