Technical debt is the unfinished work the product development team accumulated from previous releases. This debt includes: design debt, where the design is insufficiently robust in some areas; development debt, where pieces of the code are missing; and testing debt, where tests were not developed or run against the code. Technical debt is common, but […]
Summary: If someone on your project team isn’t working up to par, it might take more than a simple showing of your disapproval to put him on the right track. Johanna Rothman suggests trying specific and useful feedback—show your employees the light before you show them the door. Margaret, a manager, was concerned about one of
“I need another tester for my team” – Test Manager “I’m looking for a developer/architect/someone senior for my team” – Development manager Two managers, two teams. Although each manager has a group he calls a team, the teams are quite different. The test manager has a pool of people whom he assigns to projects in
If you’ve been hiring for a while, you probably have a list of questions you like to use with candidates. I certainly do. So let me ask you, “Can you give me an example of a time when you wanted to learn more about a candidate, and your questions didn’t seem to work?” Notice what
I was talking to a relatively young developer the other day, and I asked him about his career plans. “Oh, I don’t do career planning myself,” he said. “I wait until my manager talks to me.” Oops. While it’s true that some managers are interested in and want to coach you through your career planning,
Hiring technical managers is different — and more difficult — than hiring technical people. When I hire a technical person, such as a developer, I look for design, implementation and debugging abilities as part of the candidate’s technical skill set. But when I hire managers, the rules are different. Technical managers don’t need to be
I recently spoke with a manager who’d just added another group of four people to his original group of three. “I was doing fine with my three people before I took over this group. I had time to manage and I was able to contribute to the application. Now, with seven people, I seem to
I’ll bet you’re one of those people who have too much to do. (I haven’t met anyone in the past few years who didn’t have too much to do, so it’s not much of a bet.) And, I suspect that you’re so busy with what you’re doing, that you haven’t yet thought of what you
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. Your staff holds the key to some of the best hires you’ll make. Learn how to extract value from their connections. Employee referrals are an excellent source of hiring leads. And if you’ve been hiring for any length of time you already know that. Almost every organization has some employee referral
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. You don’t have to be an artist to put together a presentation that wows them. Normally, I speak to hiring managers, but this column is for candidates. If you’ve been working for more than a few years, or have moved, it’s easy to lose track of previous managers or peers. And