Visit to Israel
I’m teaching a few project management courses in Israel next week at Sela. If you’re in Israel, and would like to have dinner on Dec. 7, let Roy know. He’s arranging a dinner. Thank you, Roy!
MPD
MPD
How Many Process People?
Yesterday, I was talking to a colleague about a new job he’s considering. It’s in a regulated industry, and he had some assumptions: that regulated industry auditors assume a waterfall lifecycle and that organizations require process people to improve the process. Regulated industries do not require a waterfall lifecycle. What they do require is
blog, MPD
Asking for Help with Commenting
I use enetation as my comment service. The comment spammers have found a way to access enetation’s database to spam this blog and my hiring blog. After receiving over 100 spam comments this weekend, I can’t take much more and am looking for an alternative commenting service. In the meantime, ignore the spam comments you
HTP, interview
Practice Your Introduction
How you introduce yourself in an interview matters. You can draw a candidate in, or make the candidate wish he or she was walking over hot coals barefoot.One hiring manager, Sam (not his real name) started his introduction this way: “Hi, I’m Sam, a founder of this company. I’m a Phd in Computer Science. I
MPD, writing
Observations from a Writing Workshop
I led a two-hour writing workshop this past weekend. The attendees ranged from a 9-year-old who says, “I LOVE to write,” to retired adults who are involved in community projects who hate to write. We performed two writing exercises. Although the writing is useful, it’s the debrief of each writing activity that helps each writer
MPD
Definitions of Peer Review, Walkthrough, Inspection
Shimin asks, What do you mean by “peer review”? Here are my definitions: Peer review. An author asks a peer to read, comment, and critique a work artifact. If the work artifact is code, the reviewer will read the code, and may even develop and run some unit tests to check that the code
HTP, interview
Interview Questions for Testers
My column on Stickyminds this week is Building Better Test Teams. (One of the people who commented realized he could use these questions to self-assess his work.) Feel free to comment on Stickyminds or here.
MPD
Techniques to "Catch Up"
I’m reviewing my students’ updated plans for their projects. One team originally wanted full unit testing on the code as it was created, but added (my paraphrase) “if the project is late, some unit testing will be acceptable.” I responded that the farther behind the project was, the more review and testing is required.
MPD, writing
Back from AYE
Last week we held the AYE conference. Attending bloggers (in random order) were: Ron Pihlgren, Esther Derby, James Bach, Don Gray, Steve Smith, Tim Bacon, Rachel Davies, Dave Hoover, Dave Pickett, and Dave Liebreich. I hope I didn’t forget anyone. One of the highlights for me was the writing workshop. We practiced several timed writing
hiring strategy, HTP
Q&A Piece in Computerworld and Comments
Kathy Melymuka wrote up a Q&A with me in Hiring Nerds: Author lays out practical strategies for staffing up IT. And Beth Nobscot has a comment in Tips for Hiring Nerds. Beth has a number of articles on her site. I particularly liked Hire Employees That Seek Opportunity Not Pay.