If you haven’t read Amit’s review of Behind Closed Doors, ON THE BOOKSHELF: “SECRETS OF GREAT MANAGEMENT” FINALLY REVEALED take a look. A quote: So it’s a welcome surprise to read Behind Closed Doors (The Pragmatic Programmers, 2005), by management experts Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby, and to find that it’s full of realistic […]
I recently spoke with a manager who had too many projects and not enough people. (Sound familiar?) I suggested he organize two kinds of project portfolios. The first is organized with the weeks across the top and the people down the side, explaining which people are doing what in each week, and how much work
I just read Lee Copeland’s review on Stickyminds. If you don’t read Stickyminds regularly, consider it. I’m a regular columnist for Stickyminds and have written columns about hiring in the last couple of years.
When I do assessments, I ask for lots of project documents and data. A few years ago, I was working on an assessment for a very large system, so I asked for an architectural picture. I was surprised–this million plus LOC system had no picture at all. No wonder it was so hard for the
I’m in Israel right now, doing an assessment. That means that I’m the one at “another” site for my US projects. Staying in touch is hard. I’m between 7 and 10 hours ahead of everyone I need to work with. Not easy to stay in contact. I do some reasonable things while I’m here: rent
If you read this blog via a newsreader instead of a browser, you may not notice I’ve been slowly making changes. I have finally figured out how to have Blogger automatically generate the archive links in reverse chronological order on the left (when you look at the page in a browser). Unfortunately, I must have
Larry Summers has been ousted as the President of Harvard. (I’m based in the Boston/Cambridge area, so you can imagine the news coverage here.) If you look at the facts, it’s clear to me, he was canned because he didn’t fit the culture of the institution. (See the USA Today editorial and the Time article.)I
I just posted Hiring For Team Fit. Please post comments here.
I’d recommended a group consider pair-programming as a technique to help everyone learn more about the system. One of the developers came up to me later and said, “How do I give feedback while pairing?” I said “Nicely,” and promised more specifics. Here are my guidelines for pairing feedback: Explain the effect on me for
I just completed an article for a magazine. The original version was about 1400* words long, so the editors removed the last couple of paragraphs, made other minor modifications, and returned the article to me. I accepted most of their edits, added back the “missing” paragraphs, and sent them a note explaining their version