In his comment, John asked about auditions for a business analyst. The audition will vary, depending on the kind of projects you do. Here are some possibilities: For a more serial lifecycle, you could ask a BA to help elicit requirements. You’d listen to the way the candidate interviewed, if the candidate interrupted the speaker, […]
I was recently talking with an executive recruiter. “I’ve been recruiting managers for years, but in the last couple of years, it seems more tricky. My clients don’t exactly know what they want, and it seems as if everyone’s had an ‘untraditional’ career path. What’s going on?” Managers are people too—so why is recruiting managers
If you’re thinking about auditions, consider a “technical” audition for any of your open positions. A technical audition provides you a little insight into a candidate’s functional skills. If you’re hiring a developer, ask the candidate to extend a design, or find a problem and design a solution. You could ask a tester to test
I taught my Pragmatic Project Management workshop in Israel last week. I was talking about defect charts and what they mean and how I use them. (No, I don’t include priority or severity data on defect charts; just # opened and closed by week and # remaining open each week. One of the participants
While teaching a management class recently, one participant came up to me at a break, and said, “Why are you teaching us project management with this portfolio stuff? This is supposed to be a management workshop.” Portfolio management, determining which projects to fund and when, is management work. The best managers actively manage the
I’m planning to do a series on audition, and the first one is the idea that every candidate enjoys an audition of the hiring manager, team, and company. That’s because every time you organize an interview, ask a question, or do anything at all, the candidate can watch you work. That’s an audition. Labels: audition,
My Eliminating the 90% Done Schedule Game Stickyminds column is up. Enjoy! For those of you who remember the schedule game series from a few years ago, yes, this is one of the games. I added several more and wrote more in Manage It!.
Imagine you’re a project manager. You talk to your technical lead and ask how far along the team is. “Oh, we’re about 90 percent done,” he says. If you’re like most project managers, your heart sinks. You’ve been here before. Ninety percent done means the other 90 percent is left to do. But what can
At the Better Software tutorial yesterday, several managers said their hardest problem was finding good people. If you haven’t started continuous recruitingyet, it’s time to start.Continuous recruiting is not just the “keeping your eyes open” part of recruiting, it requires your (and possibly your team’s) active participation. It means you bring a couple of hundred
Esther and I were teaching a Behind Closed Doors tutorial at Better Software yesterday. One of the participants was a program manager. He couldn’t see the value of the standup meetings the Scrum teams used every day. “They talk to each other all the time–why do they need the standup? I can’t see the