Esther has insights, Specialists AND Generalists, on Why Projects Don’t Need Specialists. Her point, that people tend to coalesce around their interests, and that as specialists, they may not share interests, is something I have also seen on projects. As Esther says, Reducing categories (having “developers” rather than many named specialists) reduces differences and helps
I’ve been writing a bunch of articles about project portfolio management, exploring the ideas about committing to projects. (See Serial Monogamy Project Management for some initial thoughts.) But, as I’ve been working with clients and writing more, I’ve been realizing that not only do the decisi0n-makers have to commit to projects, but that the project
This year, after I archived my last year’s inbox, I decided my email problem was getting worse, not better. “I’m Johanna Rothman, and I have a problem collecting email in my inbox.” I decided to make an effort, one day at a time, to get to zero emails in my inbox. I’m inspired by Merlin’s
Merlin, via 43 Folders Clips has a video of Eric Idle, on John Cleese’s Approach to Writing. Aside from John Cleese’s specificity, Idle talks about how he had trouble finding collaborators until he started working with John Dupre (I don’t know how his name is spelled). Collaborating with other writers for natural language writing is
Everyone, I thank you for reading and commenting. I hope you have a healthy and happy 2009.
The nice folks at SQE have posted my keynote from the Better Software conference, Lessons Learned in Project Management. Yes, some of the material is from Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. P.S. Thank you for telling me the link was broken originally. It’s now fixed. Sorry about that!
At a recent workshop, one of the participants asked me this question, “We want to start a new Scrum team. But we are confused about who to ask to be the product owner. We have a choice of someone who doesn’t know how to be a product owner, is 10 time zones away, but knows
I taught several PM workshops last week in Israel. The Israeli project managers have the same concerns that my US students do–it’s difficult to imagine moving to Agile or even just integrating agile methods into your project if you have specialists. Specialists increase project delays in these ways: They aren’t available when you need them.
Orac’s post, Jon Stewart on the Detroit bailout, points to Stewart’s perspective on the bailout. (Watch the video; it’s hilarious.) Some paraphrases and quotes from Stewart: ‘Congress… doesn’t know what the financial industry does and doesn’t want to look stupid.’ (paraphrase of Stewart) “The auto industry has a product that’s tangible and easy to complain
I can’t tell if this is a compliment or not, but David Anderson is already disappointed with the Agile 2009 program. Since we haven’t even opened the submission system yet, never mind chosen the program, I’m surprised. What David is reacting to is my organization of the program committee. (The potential compliment is that David