August 2008

MPD, project management

Breaking Free of Legacy Projects

If you’ve never been a victim of Medieval software project management, wow, I’m impressed. You don’t have to read the rest of this post. But if you’ve ever tried to break free of a legacy product/project, and haven’t been able to, you are not alone. The problem is we can’t create a knowledge management system […]

MPD

Competition and Knowledge-Sharing

In Knowledge Management Needs to be Agile, Too, I said If you put people in competition with each other *in any way*, they will have dis-incentives to share their knowledge. John, in his comment on that post, said it seemed intuitive, but was having trouble articulating why. I’m here to help 🙂 Some of my

HTP, interview

Guest Blogging for ITJobBlog

I’m writing about a post a week for ITJobBlog. I’ve already written a couple of posts about how to develop your interview skills when you’re a candidate, part 1 and part 2. Please join us over there, too!

MPD

An Attempt to Define Value

Jim, in his comment on Intuition is Not Enough for Knowing About the Project Portfolio, said: I am having trouble with the definition of the word “value” in this context. Do you mean showing progress, as in earned value, or value to the customer, such as in ROI or payback period? Value has become a

career, HTP

Great Assistants Help (Senior) Managers

I spoke with someone who wants a senior level management position. (He’s currently a mid-level manager.) I asked him about his experience with assistants. “I’ve never had one.” Oh. Senior people have assistants because they need them. Other people need them, but our organizations have decided we can do all the grunt work ourselves. Don’t

blog, MPD

Need Help with BackUpWordPress

I’ve been using BackUpWordPress to backup my blogs. I successfully upgraded Hiring Technical People to a newer version of WP and of BackUpWordPress. I upgraded this blog, Managing Product Development, to the newer version of WP, but now my newer version of BackUpWordPress is not working. I’m pretty sure it’s all about file permissions. If

implement by feature, MPD

Is Your Product Development Half-Actions?

Via Jack Vinson, I found this gem: Stop doing half-actions. All of you who are separating your developers from your testers? You are doing half-actions. Separating the writers from the developers and testers? Half actions there, too. Even when you define architecture and implement across the architecture, instead of by feature, that’s a half-action. A

HTP

How I Manage Comments

Some of my readers appear to be new to reading and commenting on blogs. Here’s how I manage my comments: I moderate (personally) all the comments. That means I read them and approve them Any comment that has content, I approve. I don’t care who writes it. If I read a comment from anyone and

HTP, network

When Someone Offers Help, Accept It

I was talking with a junior colleague recently. He can’t find a job. I offered to help network with him. He said no, he’d look for a job himself. Big mistake. If someone offers you help networking, take it! No matter who you are, how many years of experience you have, how sure you are

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