I’ve been talking with clients recently about their managers’ and HR’s transition to agile. I hear this common question: “How do we manage performance of the people on our agile teams?” Reframe “manage performance” to “career development.” People on agile teams don’t need a manager to manage their performance. If they are retrospecting at reasonable […]
Hiring managers who haven’t read Hiring Geeks That Fit are now asking another irrelevant question: Tell me something no one else knows about you. Now, in case you aren’t sure, this is an irrelevant question. It doesn’t directly help an interviewer learn how the candidate can perform the work or fit with the team. It doesn’t
Update: I titled it Predicting the Unpredictable. I have finished the content for Essays on Estimation. But, I need a new title. The book is more than loosely coupled essays. It reads like a real book, with progression and everything. I have a number of ideas. They are (in no particular order): Predicting the Unpredictable:
I have an article up on agileconnection.com called Common Misconceptions about Agile: There Is Only One Approach. If you read my Design Your Agile Project series, you know I am a fan of determining what approach works when for your organization or project. Please leave comments over there. Thanks! Two notes: If you would like to
I had dinner with a colleague. While we were settling into our coffee, he asked me, “What does post-agile mean to you?” I was no longer calm and relaxed. “That’s a nonsense word. Post-agile!” Here’s why I reacted the way I did. We have known about miniature milestones, or inch-pebbles, since the 1940s. That’s how
I run into clients who believe they are applying agile project management. Yet they are seeing little benefit. Why? Typically these folks try to apply agile while still using a fixed mindset. In this article, I’ll give you core practices and tips for reaping the benefits of agile. Fixed vs. Growth Mindset In agile, we
Creating an Environment of Leadership I bet you have some problems that have been problems for a while. Or, you want to influence other people to change. You need an environment of leadership, because you can’t do it alone. Here are three tips to creating an environment where everyone can lead: Tip #1: Share the
You have an open position. You have two internal candidates. You’re going to hire one of them. (See Two Candidates, One Position.) Now you have a problem. You have one person who will not be happy. This often occurs when you have two candidates for technical leadership or management positions. You might have a political problem.
Have you seen Nick Korbel’s series about hiring techies? See On Hiring Techies. There are several posts: Evaluate Potential, Not Accomplishments. He’s talking about evaluating qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills. Coding Challenge: A pre-interview audition. The cool thing is that they then discuss the audition in the interview. The Team Interview. I dislike panel interviews.
For years, we bought the cone of uncertainty for estimation—that is, our estimates were just as likely to be over as under. Laurent Bossavit, in The Leprechauns of Software Engineering, shows us how that assumption is wrong. (It was an assumption that some people, including me, assumed was real.) This is a Gaussian (normal) distribution.