As part of some recent consulting and training, one of the project managers asked, “How do you make time for innovation in timeboxes? If everyone’s busy all the time, how can you allow people time to think for real innovation?” Good question. I asked how people had time for innovation now. The PM wasn’t
I’ve taught several workshops where people wanted to learn how to start adopting some agile approaches. They knew about timeboxing, but didn’t quite see how to make it work. The part they were missing was having working valuable product at the end of each timebox. I explain that to the participants, and they nod sagely.
A capable senior manager has been looking for a new job for a couple of months. He’s a capable guy, and although two months isn’t that long, I was surprised that he’s had no nibbles.Then I saw his resume. His resume was 5 pages long, and had too much detail to read quickly. It also
I taught a workshop about transitioning to Agile earlier this week. One of the things that’s difficult for many project managers to recognize is that milestones must be deliverables–otherwise, it’s too hard to know when something is done. One of the participants had a slightly puzzled look on his face when I said that,
After speaking with Mary Poppendieck at the Software Development conference a few weeks ago, I instigated a name change for Successful Project Management with Andy and Dave. Mary said the name was boring, and I had a number of cutesy suggestions. Luckily, Dave cut through the cute, and we decided on “Manage It!: Your Guide
During the past few week, while editing Successful Project Management, I had an opportunity learned to discover other ways I weaken my writing. I already knew about “get” and “put” and “do”–any words you can command a computer–are weak verbs. It’s ok to use them to start writing, but my writing is stronger when
From time to time, I refer to AYE. It’s a conference several other consultants and I created back in 2000. We were tired of feeling forced into short sessions where it was too hard to convey how our topics felt to people. (There’s just so much you can do with PowerPoint.) At AYE, all
George Dinwiddie pointed me this post, I got rejected by Google – woe is me. Read through the comments; they are as illuminating as the post. Here’s the stated Google hiring strategy, Hiring: The Lake Wobegon Strategy. I don’t see Google’s stated practice of hiring above the mean as congruent with what’s happening in practice.
On my recent trip to NZ and AU (to speak about project management), I had some informal conversations with people who could not find enough people for their projects.From my non-scientific survey, it appears that we have started a technical hiring crunch (not enough candidates for positions). Consider people you might not have considered before:
Successful Project Management is off for copyediting. While reviewing, Esther and Daniel found some of my take-space words: So and Now. I just did a find-in-project (thank goodness for TextMate) and excised most of them. We’ll see if the copyeditor leaves the few I left, or if she has a better idea. If I can