Bill popped his head into Jan’s office as he was leaving for the evening. “Jan, do you have a minute? I have to do performance reviews tonight. I was going to drink Scotch and work my way through all of them.” Jan laughed and said, “Sure. Scotch might make you feel good, but it will […]
I’ve just been named to one of the 100 top management experts on Twitter. See Keeping Up with #Management:100 Experts on Twitter. You have to page down under “Executive Coaching” to see me. I’ll return to editing my “Design Your Agile Project” series now. It needs serious editing. That’s why you haven’t seen the next
When I was a young developer, my employers were hungry for talent. They hired women, as well as men. Of course, my first employer wanted to know what birth control I used, which was an illegal question at the time. I told them so. Fast forward to the 80’s, when I became a hiring manager.
What do you do for geographically distributed teams, if you want to move to agile? First question: does the team want to move to agile? Or, does the management want to move to agile? I am serious. I might take the same actions, but for different different reasons. In either case, the team needs to
There’s a comment in Interview Questions for Program Managers. What should I do if I have experience relevant to being a program manager, but I haven’t been a program manager? How do I answer these questions? (I had posted a number of potential questions a hiring manager could ask a program manager in that post.)
The point of using agile is to get finish something valuable-to-the-business quickly, to get feedback. Why? For several reasons, but the first one is so you can change the project’s priorities. The second is so you can change the project portfolio. The third is to get feedback on what you’ve done. Okay, you can exchange
The more I see teams transition to agile, the more I am convinced that each team is unique. Each project is unique. Each organizational context is unique. Why would you take an off-the-shelf solution that does not fit your context? (I wrote Manage It! because I believe in a context-driven approach to project management in
I gave a talk at the Action Networking group a few weeks ago. I promised to post my slides, and I finally have. Improve Your Social Networking Skills is up on slideshare. I do not claim to have the best social networking skills. I am a work in progress. However, I am improving them, daily
I say in Manage Your Job Search and Six Tips for Editing Your Resume that you have to fill in the details of your resume. It’s the details that count. Here are four tips that might help: For every line on your resume, what action did you take that added value to the project or
Join me for a webinar on March 10, 2014 at 7pm Eastern. My topic is “Overcoming 7 Common Pitfalls of Transitioning to Agile in Software Engineering.” I’m speaking as part of the Graduate Professional Studies Spring 2014 Guest Speaker Series. Register here. P.S. If you missed the webinar, here is the audio recording. Enjoy!