Merlin, via 43 Folders Clips has a video of Eric Idle, on John Cleese’s Approach to Writing. Aside from John Cleese’s specificity, Idle talks about how he had trouble finding collaborators until he started working with John Dupre (I don’t know how his name is spelled). Collaborating with other writers for natural language writing is
Way back in November, I taught a half-day tutorial called “Hiring for an Agile Team” at Agile Development Practices. The participants had several questions I thought you might find useful. Several participants wanted to know how a candidate would deal with challenging others and taking “criticism” during the workday. They had these questions: Tell me
Everyone, I thank you for reading and commenting. I hope you have a healthy and happy 2009.
The nice folks at SQE have posted my keynote from the Better Software conference, Lessons Learned in Project Management. Yes, some of the material is from Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. P.S. Thank you for telling me the link was broken originally. It’s now fixed. Sorry about that!
At a recent workshop, one of the participants asked me this question, “We want to start a new Scrum team. But we are confused about who to ask to be the product owner. We have a choice of someone who doesn’t know how to be a product owner, is 10 time zones away, but knows
George asked in a comment what a fake audition was. Finally, I’m ready to discuss this. (Sorry for the delay, George.) A fake audition is when the audition is incongruous with the situation. In the situation described in A Second Chance Audition, the candidate cared about the outcome of the first audition, but the audience
I taught several PM workshops last week in Israel. The Israeli project managers have the same concerns that my US students do–it’s difficult to imagine moving to Agile or even just integrating agile methods into your project if you have specialists. Specialists increase project delays in these ways: They aren’t available when you need them.
While I draft an answer to George’s fake audition question, let me address Alex’s question about using LinkedIn for recommendations. I use LinkedIn, especially for coaching recommendations. I don’t know if it helps me get more clients, but I keep thinking it should 🙂 Just remember, a recommendation is not a reference. A recommendation does
Orac’s post, Jon Stewart on the Detroit bailout, points to Stewart’s perspective on the bailout. (Watch the video; it’s hilarious.) Some paraphrases and quotes from Stewart: ‘Congress… doesn’t know what the financial industry does and doesn’t want to look stupid.’ (paraphrase of Stewart) “The auto industry has a product that’s tangible and easy to complain
Jurgen surprised me in a comment, when he said that only the worst employees provided references. He said he doesn’t check references. I was astonished. I check references each and every time I extend an offer. I check references for people who do work on our house. I check references for people we ask to