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 […]
My PM students are articulating insights about projects that I’m happy to see. One project team said this in their charter, “The value of the product is moving the paper successfully across the room. The value of the project is in the journey, not the destination.” Some projects exist to see if the project
I asked my project management students to create a project dashboard for the projects they’re organizing, so we can talk about what happens when the indicators go up down or sideways. One of the teams came up with a “risk constellation” chart — which I thought was a brilliant way to show risks. (If
I’m teaching project management to graduate students this year. One of their assignments is to keep a project management journal. I explained it this way: PMs make decisions where the consequences — the results of their decisions — can be far removed from the decision. One of the things I want the students to
I presented a webinar today, Becoming a More Agile Tester. Here’s the PDF. (It’s a talk, so if you read it and think you’ve missed something, you have. Send me email with your question.) I’ve been thinking a lot about test assets these days, and here’s a highlight from the presentation, a comparison of
I’m at PNSQC this week. I gave my metrics talk yesterday, and something occurred to me: in traditional projects, we’re used to measuring what’s been done. In agile projects, we measure what’s left to do. I just realized yesterday that the difference in how we measure makes a difference in how people feel about
I’m teaching my older daughter how to drive, and I now realize why inexperienced drivers are so dangerous. They are inconsistent and unpredictable, because they are inexperienced. I can’t help her gain experience by making a list of all possible situations and explaining what she has to do. I have to generalize. Right now,
My book about hiring, Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People is available, as of today. (I don’t have my copy yet, and my reviewers don’t have their copies yet either. I’m hoping to be able to ship to my reviewers on Friday.) I firmly believe
Eric Sink is writing a series on source control how-tos (also known as software configuration management). If you’re a project manager or functional manager and you don’t know enough about source control, read them. Heck, even if you do know about SCM, read them. Yes, Eric works for a vendor, so his examples are
I was reading An Elder Challenges Outsourcing’s Orthodoxy, yet another discussion about the merits — or not — of outsourcing. (You may have to register to read the article.) Whether you think outsourcing is an economic good or evil, here’s my perspective. You can choose to turn your products into commodities or you can