Summary: Competition between teams does not improve performance. In fact, the added stress may shift team members’ focus from creating a quality product to self-preservation due to fear of failure. Johanna suggests managers emphasize collaboration between teams over competition. “Jonah and Sarah, this next round I want to initiate a little competition to see whose […]
In the blogosphere and in the press, there is an increasing notice about the lack of women in technical fields and management positions. Here is some data: Why women leave tech: what the research says by Sue Gardner. Read Visualizing Silicon Valley’s Lack of Diversity. Notice that tech is overwhelmingly white and male. It does
In self-organizing teams, teams remove their own obstacles. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. In Scrum, the Scrum Master is supposed to facilitate removing the team’s obstacles that the team can’t remove. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. And, what if you aren’t doing Scrum, or you’re
Is it time for you to look for a new job? Or, thinking about looking for a new job? If so, you want to know about two tools: understanding your career anchors and mining your career timeline. I just read about Edgar Schein’s Career Anchors. The 8 anchors are: Technical/Functional General Managerial Autonomy/Independence Security/Stability Entrepreneurial
Do You Have an Abundance or Scarcity Mindset? Have you met people at work who believe in zero-sum games, with one winner and one loser? “You must do my project. I don’t care about anyone else.” That you-against-me is an indication of a scarcity mindset. Some people believe in the abundance mindset where, together, we create
We talk a lot in agile about generalizing specialists. Scott Ambler has a terrific essay on what a generalizing specialist is: Has one or more technical specialties… Has at least a general knowledge of software development. Has at least a general knowledge of the business domain in which they work. Actively seeks to gain new
A undergraduate student sent me this survey about finding a job. I said I would post it for him. Here is the link: https://www.survio.com/survey/d/C8M4I3F8F9M7L4Y7S?preview=1#.VGjJg3Gqov1.gmail If you are looking for a job, please help this Italian undergrad, studying business in Lisbon. I am not affiliated with this program. I am doing this to help a student.
If you read my Three Alternatives to Making Smaller Stories, you noticed one thing. In each of these examples, the problem was in the teams’ ability to show progress and create interim steps. But, what about when you have a “wicked” problem, when you don’t know if you can create the answer? If you are
When I was in Israel a couple of weeks ago teaching workshops, one of the big problems people had was large stories. Why was this a problem? If your stories are large, you can’t show progress, and more importantly, you can’t change. For me, the point of agile is the transparency—hey, look at what we’ve
Do you know about the Conscious Software Development Telesummit? Michael Smith is interviewing more than 20 experts about all aspects of software development, project management, and project portfolio management. He’s releasing the interviews in chunks, so you can listen and not lose work time. Isn’t that smart of him? If you haven’t signed up yet,