Author name: Johanna

I help you identify and solve the problems that prevent you from releasing systems, hiring the right people, deciding which project to work on next. I take a pragmatic approach: what will work best for you, now? Some people call me a focuser. Some call me an accelerator. When I work with people, first we define our goal together. Typically, it's to get a better product out the door faster. I work with my clients to help managers figure out how to do the managing better, and how the technical contributors can contribute better, not to create a by-the-book system. I work with you, your staff, and your current product development practices. Together, we learn what works well for you and what doesn't. I believe in changing only what needs to be changed at the current time, to maximize your success. We work together to develop a blueprint for the future, and to build in capacity to recognize and implement change.

MPD, personal

A Little Marital Humor

We’re on our way home from a ski vacation. Mark’s the driver; I’m the navigator. This morning (in the dark at 5:30am), Mark said, “I don’t need a GPS. I already have a voice to direct me.” I, of course, cracked up. Labels: humor, personal

management, MPD

It’s Too Hard to Bring New People Into the Organization

A number of my clients and colleagues are struggling with the problem of bringing people into their organizations. In Hiring the Best …, I recommend the buddy system for bringing people on. I wrote a little article, How2 Create a Buddy (Informal Mentoring) Program. But maybe you didn’t know that, or can’t figure out how

HTP, job analysis

Making Jobs Attractive, Part 0

According to my colleagues inside organizations, we are officially in a seller’s (candidate’s) market for technical jobs. Managers report it’s difficult to find people, and they want to know how to make the jobs attractive. I don’t claim to know a lot about sales (just enough to keep myself in business!).  Here’s the one thing

MPD

Estimating Tasks: How Much Time is in Your Day?

  I plan on about 6 hours of work in a regular day. That’s project work, not answering the phone, email, making arrangements for workshops or consulting or speaking, or invoicing, or any of the other things I do. Nope, that’s just project work. The other half of that question is how many regular days

MPD

Can You See Your Project's Dashboard?

  In the PM (it’s actually called “software methodology, but I assign a project, so students can experiment with methodologies) class I teach at TGI, I ask the students to create (and then use) a project dashboard, so they have a quantitative way to see their progress (or lack thereof). The students presented their dashboards

HTP, job analysis

Smart Hiring Decisions

Jason Yip’s Hire squirrels instead of turkeys has a link to a discussion of Harvard’s hiring of Faust as the new president. Looks like Harvard got smart and thought about cultural fit, and those critical influencing and negotiation skills. (See my other post A Perfect Example of Insufficient Cultural Fit.) On the other hand, read

MPD, schedule

Scheduling the Project is a Team Activity

  Glen Alleman in What’s Wrong With This Picture says this: dentifying, sequencing, and assigning durations to tasks is NOT the role of the Project Scheduler, it is the role of the project team, along with the Project Scheduler. The Work Package Manager, the Customer, the entire team that is accountable for delivering the business

MPD

Automated Testing Helps Scrum Succeed

  Guy in his We love Scrum at GigaSpaces, says something critical: […]we’ve been working in the past couple of months on upgrading our automated testing framework. I’ve been assigning five of my top engineers and architects on a project with the objective to provide the development team fast feedback and monitors on quality. Now

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