I was extremely fortunate in my choice of companies and work early in my career. I developed in assembly language and microcode and Fortran for a few years. Then, I moved to object oriented languages, primarily at Symbolics, using LISP. At Symbolics (I left in 1990), we practiced incremental development, iterative planning, and some […]
Summary: Before a software application is released, its upgrade is already being developed. But what about upgrades for software testers? In this column, Johanna Rothman offers some ways to strengthen the existing talents within your test team. I was speaking to a senior manager, and he said, “I don’t have the money to hire an
Many project managers (and senior management) still have the mindset of “How much can we fit into this project?” instead of “How little can we do?” How-much thinking carries these assumptions (even if your managers don’t agree): People are a scarce resource, and that we should put all of them to use immediately, working
One hiring manager loves this question: “If you had a magic wand, and three wishes, what would they be?” My three wishes deal with enough money to buy a sailboat, paying someone else to drive my kids to their doctor appointments and lacrosse games, and buy books whenever I want. I don’t want to tell
The Pragmatic Manager, Volume 1 #3 Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Choosing Facilitation Announcements On the Bookshelf Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Choosing Facilitation Meetings are a fact of our lives. Most of the time we don’t need a facilitator to help move our
Don’t depend on a work breakdown structure to keep your project on target: Write it out to help managers, team members and stakeholders find consensus. “I can’t get senior management to agree on what I think the project is supposed to do,” a project manager recently complained. “The developers don’t believe me when I tell
In Hiring Tip #5: Ask Behavior-description Interview Questions, I suggested that hiring managers learn how to ask behavioral interviewing questions. Behavioral questions assume that people’s behaviors don’t change; that people reapply those behaviors to new situations. If you’re looking for a job, learn how to answer these questions.Behavioral interviewing questions ask you questions about how
I ended up in the hospital last weekend (facial cellulitis – yuck). On my floor, we had people who were not too sick, who needed a few days to recover from an acute problem. Everyone’s prognosis was good, and the average stay on the floor was 3 days. Recovering from an acute illness takes
I had dinner last night with a CIO who’s working on outsourcing a significant part of his development and testing. He suggested that any senior manager who’s not thinking about outsourcing and how to make it work is missing the boat. “When you’re in a fixed cost development situation, and people are most of
When is a year of experience not a year of experience? When that experience doesn’t match your needs. Take my friend Zack for instance. A VP of Development, he recently came to me with a problem. “We hire the best people money can buy,” he said. “They have degrees and tons of experience. Why can’t