I’m sure you’ve heard conversations like this: Senior Manager: “Candace, I know you said you needed twelve weeks to test this release, but we’re really in a jam. I need you to release sooner. What can you do for me in six weeks?” As much as you might like to say, “Um, not much,” that’s
Seth Godin is one sharp fella. He’s just published a new ebook, BullMarket: Companies That Can Help You Make Something Happen. I’m thrilled to be part of the Seth’s “unscientific listing blogs” section, along with Hal Macomber and Clarke Ching. I’m flattered to be part of BullMarket. And I recommend you read Free Prize
If you’re a hiring manager and you haven’t started using a blog to help people find you, consider it. Right now, there are still tons of great technical people looking for jobs, but it’s hard to find just the right candidates. And, I’ve been reading articles in the popular press that say we’ll have a
I exchanged email with a graduate student recently, who’s just starting to think about what she wants to do when she graduates. Since she’s about a year away from graduation, this is a great time to start thinking. She originally thought she might want to work with teams who maintain software systems. I commented that
I’ve also been writing intermittently on the Job and HR blogs. I don’t cross-reference the blog postings here, so look for different posts there. I haven’t been writing a lot in those blogs due to my work schedule, but that seems to be working out.
Based on yesterday’s comments, it’s past time for me to define what I mean when I talk about product management, product lifecycle management, lifecycle choices, and project management. Here goes: Product management: The activities that plan the product’s evolution from birth to obsolescence. In a product company, product managers perform these roles. In an IT
I’m not a fan of project scheduling tools. I have trouble making the tools create the schedule the way I think, and I can never quite see the whole schedule when it’s in electronic form. Other people, especially senior managers, tend to believe the project schedule once it’s in electronic form, no matter how
Your CIO has two projects he wants finished in the next month. “We can share this project manager and that test team on both of these high-priority projects,” he declares confidently. “The projects are small enough that the teams should be able to make progress.” Two weeks later, the CIO realizes neither project is progressing
In Rethinking a Management Decision, Kevin Salwen reflects on when it’s appropriate to hire someone with a cut in pay. As I’ve moved further along in my career, I realize that there are a whole host of jobs that are just plain better than what people have now….Now, I’m wondering how much I would allow
I’ve noticed a common theme among the projects in trouble I’ve encountered over the past few months: functional milestones without deliverable milestones as a part of the functional milestone. Here are examples of functional milestones: “requirements complete,” “code complete.” These milestones raise these questions for me: How can you know something is complete when