In my project management class today, one of the students asked about how to schedule interdependent sub-projects. The scheduling tool he uses doesn’t deal well with pieces of one sub-project having dependencies of other sub-projects. It’s difficult to see the critical path, and to know what’s really going on. (It’s too easy to have […]
Clarke Ching’s Multitasking MAKES YOU STUPID is another great article. But when I teach PMs or coach managers, they say, “I need to multitask to get things done.” Or, they say, “I’m ok with multitasking.” Even smart people think they can do a couple of things at one time. Maybe they can. But the more
I’m teaching a few project management courses in Israel next week at Sela. If you’re in Israel, and would like to have dinner on Dec. 7, let Roy know. He’s arranging a dinner. Thank you, Roy!
Yesterday, I was talking to a colleague about a new job he’s considering. It’s in a regulated industry, and he had some assumptions: that regulated industry auditors assume a waterfall lifecycle and that organizations require process people to improve the process. Regulated industries do not require a waterfall lifecycle. What they do require is
I use enetation as my comment service. The comment spammers have found a way to access enetation’s database to spam this blog and my hiring blog. After receiving over 100 spam comments this weekend, I can’t take much more and am looking for an alternative commenting service. In the meantime, ignore the spam comments you
I led a two-hour writing workshop this past weekend. The attendees ranged from a 9-year-old who says, “I LOVE to write,” to retired adults who are involved in community projects who hate to write. We performed two writing exercises. Although the writing is useful, it’s the debrief of each writing activity that helps each writer
Shimin asks, What do you mean by “peer review”? Here are my definitions: Peer review. An author asks a peer to read, comment, and critique a work artifact. If the work artifact is code, the reviewer will read the code, and may even develop and run some unit tests to check that the code
I’m reviewing my students’ updated plans for their projects. One team originally wanted full unit testing on the code as it was created, but added (my paraphrase) “if the project is late, some unit testing will be acceptable.” I responded that the farther behind the project was, the more review and testing is required.
Last week we held the AYE conference. Attending bloggers (in random order) were: Ron Pihlgren, Esther Derby, James Bach, Don Gray, Steve Smith, Tim Bacon, Rachel Davies, Dave Hoover, Dave Pickett, and Dave Liebreich. I hope I didn’t forget anyone. One of the highlights for me was the writing workshop. We practiced several timed writing
Student Syndrome occurs when the person with the task waits until the last possible moment to start. Some people spend their entire academic career waiting until the night before a project is due and then starting it, pulling an all-nighter, and getting some (hopefully adequate) grade. Student Syndrome isn’t for me, but I know lots