I returned from my wonderful around-the-world trip last Friday afternoon. I didn’t try to work until Monday, but I realized today that I was still Asleep at the Wheel. I attempted to use a new-to-me configuration management system (Subversion). In my befuddled state, I managed to use some CVS commands instead of the Subversion commands. […]
I was reading You Are Possibly Very Annoying and realized I hadn’t posted Esther‘s and my six steps to effective feedback. (This is in the management book, starting publisher editing.) Here they are: Make sure you’re giving feedback about the work or the working relationships. Especially avoid clothes and other personal appearance issues (unless
In one of my classes earlier this week, one project manager explained that he spent an entire day each week working the Gantt chart in a scheduling tool. He has a project of roughly 20 developers, a few testers, and a few other people (I’ve forgotten the details). I asked if he had one-on-ones
I’m teaching project management (and some hiring) workshops in Israel. I’ve caught up with timezones, so I may even be able to post this week. I attempted to explain why pair programming works to some skeptical project managers last week. I explained that in the best environments, a person can work 6 hours a
I’m in lovely Perth, Australia this weekend, staying with some friends of mine. The husband was explaining how he makes sure his department buys coffee, tea, milk, sugar for everyone in the department. “It costs us about $2000 to supply the department for a year. In return, people congregate around the coffee, discussing work.
Workforce Management has tons of articles full of content. So I gotta wonder why they posted Forced Ranking Could Improve Business Performance. In the article, it says, “Forced ranking, the study finds, is more successful in the first several years of implementation.” Well, duh. If you force rank — even once — the people
You’ve probably seen these elsewhere, but since this blog is for me too, I don’t want to forget about them: Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work: 6 Lessons. I particularly liked the origins of the 40-hour work week. Conquering the Cubicle Syndrome. I liked the idea of talking to people, building those relationships. Like Esther says
In Who Wants to be a Technical Lead? I promised I’d talk about succession planning. Here’s the general idea: as someone who works for a living, your job should be to work yourself out of your current job by learning, practicing, and mastering some new skills. The less work experience you have, the easier this
Via Pragmatic Marketing, I found In Search of Overhead Heroes” by George Tillman, who advocates thinking like a business even if you’re supporting the business, not contributing directly to revenue. Certainly, you’re supposed to align yourself and contain costs. But here are the questions I felt were most important for any organization to answer:
Managers have an obligation to coach employees to help employees obtain better performance. However, managers choose when and whom to coach. Managers also have an obligation to provide feedback — which is not a choice. Every employee deserves feedback about his/her work on a frequent (weekly) basis. I’ve never met a manager who didn’t