Most people don’t lie on their resumes or in interviews. However, if you’re not sure about a candidate, here’s a checklist to help you detect the truth about a candidate: Always check references. I ask for a minimum of three references from a candidate, at least one of which is a manager. Develop a […]
At a recent presentation about agile project management, I mentioned refactoring. One of the attendees said, “No, I don’t want to redesign the whole application every iteration. Agile’s not for me!” Well, I decided I couldn’t address the resistance if I didn’t first start with defining refactoring. I said, “Hmm, refactoring isn’t the same
Joyce Crane’s article, Crossing honesty line in job search can have dire consequences talks about the consequences of lying on a resume — and getting caught. It’s not worth it. Don’t lie on your resume or in an interview. So how do you best position yourself? By practicing your stories of what you’ve actually done
The zeroth measure of productivity is showing up. Sorry I haven’t been showing up, but I have to admit, sleeping is good 🙂 Ok, back to business. When I tried to calculate productivity of a team, here’s what I measured for one team over the course of five releases (Apologies to bloglet subscribers; tables
Uh oh. I’m seeing laundry list job descriptions. You know, the kind of job description that so carefully bounds the job with so much technical tool skill, that no one could fit the job. If your job descriptions are laundry lists of tool skill, reconsider how you’re describing the job. I like to think about
When we think about manufacturing work, we measure labor productivity as the ratio of the output of goods and services to the labor hours devoted to the production of that output, output per hour. (See U.S. Dept of Labor) Remember the discussion of Project Constraints and Requirements? That’s where I said the project requirements were
In the past few weeks, too many managers have written to me, asking for help on knowing how “good” their people are. When I ask more questions, such as “What does good mean to you?”, they say they want to know who’s most productive. Then I walk through this analysis with them: Productivity is
I was reading How Would You Design Bill Gates’s Bathroom? and realized that Microsoft discriminates for people who are visionaries, people who see the big picture. When they do this, they ignore the other types of people necessary for successful products and projects: the stabilizer, the firefighter, and the catalyst.Keirsey calls these temperaments by slightly
I’m a big fan of one-on-one meetings between the manager (or project manager) and the employee. Private meetings provide the manager a chance to see project and personal status in a way that group meetings and email status reports don’t. I wrote an article for Software Development about one-on-ones. BTW, if you’re using group
Steve Smith commented on yesterday’s post, “I think managers have a tough job, especially middle managers. I think that middle managers who are respectful to their employees but choose to execute to abide with their management team’s decision are acting in a dignified manner.” Steve is right, and it’s not always easy to balance