There’s a twitter discussion of what people “should” do in certain situations. One of the participants believes that people “should” want to learn on their own time and work more than 40 hours per week. I believe in learning. I don’t believe in expecting people to work more than 40 hours/week. My experience is that […]
As more of my clients transition to agile, many of them have a fascinating question: How do I assess who is doing what on my team? When I ask why they want to know, they say it’s all related to reviews, rewards, and general compensation. They are still discussing individual compensation, not team compensation. When
Years ago, I was the expert for two specific products in a small development organization. When it came time for my manager to divide up the work, I always got those products to add features to, or maintain. That was fine for a while, until I got bored. I went to my boss with a request for different work.
I have posted my most recent Pragmatic Manager newsletter on my site. Read Johanna’s 2014 New Years Tips. I have a question for you. I send the newsletter to my subscribers the last week of the year. I call them “this-year” tips. Some people ask me if I mean “the next year”. I don’t because it’s
I once worked in an organization where the senior managers thought they should motivate us, the team members. They decided to have a team competition, complete with prizes. I was working on a difficult software problem with a colleague on another team. We both needed to jointly design our pieces of the product to make
In self-organizing teams, teams remove their own obstacles. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. In Scrum, the Scrum Master is supposed to facilitate removing the team’s obstacles that the team can’t remove. It’s a good idea. It can be difficult in practice. And, what if you aren’t doing Scrum, or you’re
Sometimes, you just need to get on with the work. You need to give yourself some breathing room so you can think for a while. Here are some tips that will help you tackle the day-to-day management work: Schedule and conduct your one-on-ones. Being a manager means you make room for the people stuff: the
Long ago, I was a project manager and senior engineer for a company undergoing a Change Transformation. You know the kind, where the culture changes, along with the process. The senior managers had bought into the changes. The middle managers were muddling through, implementing the changes as best they could. Us project managers and the
Let me guess. If you are a successful woman, in the past, you’ve been told you’re too abrasive, too direct, maybe even too assertive. Too much. See The One Word Men Never See In Their Performance Reviews. Here’s the problem. You might be. I was. But never in the “examples” my bosses provided. The “examples”
Way back when I was a developer, my professors taught me structured design and design by contract. Those were supposed to be the silver bullets for programming. You see, if you specified things enough, and structured things enough, everything would all work out. I thought I was the only idiot that structure and specification didn’t