I’m giving a talk at Agile 2012, entitled “How Much Will This Project Cost?” It doesn’t seem to matter what life cycle your project has, someone wants you to predict the cost. The problem is, it’s the wrong question. But, that won’t stop people from asking it anyway. People want to know the cost so
I’ll be in Sao Paulo, Brazil, teaching project portfolio management, Sept 10-11, 2012. I’ll be teaching in English. I suspect that the class will simulate and interact with each other in Portugese! I’ll be the one who is left out. (That’s what I do when I teach in a non-English speaking country.) We have 5
Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.Vol 9, #14: Your Culture:What Does Your Organization Reward? July 31, 2012 ISSN:2164-1196 In This Issue: Your Culture: What
I wrote the first of a three-part series about looking at culture when you hire people last month. I posted that Pragmatic Manager, Your Culture: What is Okay for You to Discuss? and forgot to tell you. If you are on my email list, you received today’s Pragmatic Manager about what the organization values and
If you are looking for a job, it’s more important that you know what your previous patterns are, so that you can make a choice: Do I repeat my previous pattern this time? Without knowing, we tend to repeat the same behaviors. Once we know, we have choices. One of the best ways I know
Jeff Haden, over at Inc, says that these three interview questions reveal everything. You are supposed to go down the person’s resume and ask them about each and every job they have ever had. The questions are: How did you find out about the job? What did you like about the job before you started?
Do you have a product owner who doesn’t want to admit to technical debt? “Give me another feature! And another feature! Just keep giving me features! It’s feature time, baby!” Once a product owner has the heady feeling of seeing features one after the other, it’s difficult for that product owner to consider anything other
I’m not a rabid football fan. I enjoy the game, but I can happily breeze through the fall without realizing which teams are where in the standings. And, when it comes to the college teams, I have no clue. So, when the whole Paterno/Sandusky scandal broke, I first thought, “Oh, Joe Paterno was supposed to
I’ve been having some email conversations with some project and program managers turned Scrum Masters. In general here’s how things have proceeded: Their organizations decided agile was a great idea Their organizations decided Scrum was a great idea to implement agile (because they don’t know the difference between Scrum and agile) The teams started working
“Everyone is worth saving. Everyone is worth saving.” Jimmy was muttering under his breath as he walked into my office. “Hi, Steve. I’m here for our one-on-one. I have a real problem.” “OK, let’s hear it.” “Frieda is a problem in my group.” “Jimmy, we have discussed Frieda before. I thought you were going to