There’s a discussion on a mailing list about a partially committed-to project: there aren’t enough people on the project, the people don’t have the time to do the work because they are interrupted all the time by support of previously released applications. The only people available are part-time people who are not available when the […]
I’m trying to clean up the project portfolio management book for technical review, and I realized the other night (well, morning, when I woke up), that I’d missed explaining a key idea. We all work on several kinds of projects: Projects that maintain the organization, the kind we need to run. These projects “keep the
A number of my friends of long standing and colleagues are looking for jobs. (Friends of long standing is another way to say old friends without calling them old 🙂 They all have over 20 years of experience. The way they used to find jobs–through recruiters–is not working. Sure, recruiters have some openings, but most
So the economy isn’t so hot right now and you’re looking for a new job. Not the easiest of circumstances. You’re calling people to network. You’ve updated your resume. Maybe you’ve even called me. I looked for you on LinkedIn, but I can’t find you because your name is Tom Smith and there are several
Jack has an intriguing post, The fun of productivity measures. He ponders how to measure knowledge workers. For software project teams, it’s easy: the number of running, tested features over time. The features have to be complete. No partial credit for partially done features. But what about for managers? That’s a little trickier. I like
I read a bunch of blogs, and Evolving Excellence is consistently good. I was struck by this post, Homozygosity – That’s The Problem!. I had never heard of homozygosity before, so I looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster, it’s having the two genes at corresponding loci on homologous chromosomes identical for one or more loci
I’m writing for gantthead.com this year, about agile and lean project portfolio management. My first article was posted back when I was so sick. See The Game of Risk. You can leave comments there, or if you prefer, here.
At SD West last week, one of the folks in my talks asked about how to hire a Scrum Master. First, don’t do this: Don’t look for a CSM. A CSM means the person has taken a 2-day workshop where he or she may have practiced some pieces of Scrum. There is no guarantee that
Last week, at SD West, I led a 3-hour coaching tutorial. I got lucky. Dave Nicolette and Mike Vizdos participated. (I love it when my peers join me in a tutorial!) Dave reminded us that “explaining with examples” are a great way to coach. You take a recent example of some occurrence that strikes you
I’ve been sick for weeks, and am finally coming out of it to be close to healthy. (I was still coughing in the 8-degree Fahrenheit cold leaving the gym. Oh well.) One of the problems is that my work doesn’t stop if I’m sick. I bet yours doesn’t either. Daughter #2 asked last night if