I was thinking about the election. (How can anyone in the US avoid it?) I read Seth’s piece, Politics!, and thought that nightly debates might be a great way to discover who the smartest people are. Maybe. But a lot closer than the sound bites we get now. Since we’re not going to have nightly […]
When we arrived in Minneapolis, I tried to find an elevator down to baggage claim. (Yes, my knee is not working well enough to take an escalator.) I did find one, but it said “employees only.” Many people who travel are employees. They are just not your employees. No, I didn’t use the elevator–although I
Mark and I visited his family in the Midwest. We used miles to pay for my ticket. Aside from spending 50,000 miles (is it possible to get a ticket for 25,000 miles? We haven’t in years), it cost $5 for the ticket, $75 for the “services fees” and $15 to check one bag. Yes, this
I was reading Ralph’s post, Whose Fault Is It?, and I realized that if you don’t know enough about management, you can misunderstand the root cause. Ralph’s example is of defects in an iteration and how they were not detected early enough because the acceptance criteria were missing. The criteria were missing because the testers
I had a lovely email conversation with someone who wanted to hire a firm to perform phone screens. That just makes no sense to me. Here’s what happens when a hiring manager performs the phone screens: When a hiring manager creates a phone screen script, the manager refines the essentials of the job. Based on
I spoke recently with a (new) Scrum Master with a team who’s new to Scrum. One of the team members is a little stuck. He doesn’t feel comfortable going to the task board to take a task when he’s done. He wants to wait until someone else is ready and then work with that person.
I don’t normally pay much attention to these kinds of things, but what the heck, this will give Jurgen a link back. Jurgen has collated the Top 100 Blogs for Development Managers (Q3 2008). I have no idea if he will continue to do this quarter after quarter (!). I’m glad that other people find
So you didn’t get the promotion. Before you look for a new job, ask why. It’s possible you’re missing something critical for that role. Many years ago, I was working as a “senior member of the technical staff.” I was a tester, had coordinated beta tests, much of the testing work for the last couple
I was trying to address the issue of ROI (Return on Investment) in the project portfolio book. I don’t buy project ROI. First, the idea of a project for software is an artificial construct—our consumers buy running tested features, that we happen to package in a project to release as a product. But the idea
In July, I sent out the Pragmatic Manager email newsletter: 90% Done is Not Almost Done. I have finally posted it. Enjoy!