I’m thrilled to announce that you can see the announcement of Esther’s and my book, currently entitled Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management Revealed. Yes, this is the book we pair-wrote. We’re in the final stretch. First is working with Andy and Dave and whomever from Pragmatic Bookshelf to make sure we didn’t […]
I’ve been meaning to write a series of posts on schedule games, and a story I heard over the weekend has jolted me into writing about schedule chicken. I’m most familiar with schedule chicken that happens in meetings. Usually in a project status meeting, with the project manager and the project team, especially where
A reader, Mike, sent me this gem: Interview with the Intern. The lessons: Mind your language — particularly in the cover letter. I tend to give more benefit of the doubt with affect/effect. But I don’t have much patience with cover letters that misspell my name or the name of the company. Calm down. I’ve
Two different colleagues wrote me with similar conundrums. Their managers wants a “technical” project manager. One colleague was a hardware person, the other was a tester. They have both been managing software projects for several years. No one has told them they were ineffective. (I’ve discussed this issue before: The Difference Between Project Managers and
My most recent column for Fast Company/Inc’s hiring center is Interviewing New College Grads. Leave comments here – Enjoy!
Via Curious?, I found Give Curiosity and Chance. Here’s a telling quote From a hiring perspective (you just knew this was coming, right?), hiring managers are in love with deliverables and narrowly defined requirements. Look at job postings these days and you’ll find a litany of mandatory experience and skills. Innovation requires curiosity. And, it
I’ve said before that networking is critically important to finding a job and finding candidates in Use the Power of Your One-on-One Network. A colleague of mine has just sent me an email explaining her predicament, I am currently looking for a job and networks are important to me. If you are interested in the resume
Clarke Ching’s post, Functional Blindess, reminded me to post the ways I know about how to see the current state in a project or in an organization. For projects: Ask to see a demo. Can you see anything at all? If you can’t see the results of prototype tests, unit tests, some kind of
Roy Osherove taped my talk, “Nine Steps to Becoming More Agile” at the Israel Agile group meeting a couple of weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the quality of the recording is. The recording isn’t perfect, because I walk back and forth across the room when I speak. I didn’t remember
I thank Keith Ray who forwarded this gem to me from the XP mailing list: “Puzzles are fantastic. They’re an instant way of figuring out whether you want to work for the organisation or not.” — Adrian Howard When I teach interviewing, people tell me they like puzzles because they think they’re watching how people