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
I work hard on my speaking skills–not just how I present myself on the platform, but also the content of what I say, and how I present that. I’ve almost converted to Keynote, but occasionally still use PowerPoint. For AYE, we don’t use any PowerPoint (or equivalent) at all. Here’s why. If you scroll down,
Drum roll please… Manage It! Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management is available. (I don’t know when it will be available from Amazon. Soon, I suspect.) See the press release. I’m sooo excited. Labels: Manage It, project management
In his recent IEEE Software column, “Ship Effortlessly” J.B. Rainsberger has a gem: I start each project with two rules: all source files must be in a version control repository, and the build must be fully automated at all times. Does your project follow these rules? If not, what would you have to do?