If you’re a regular reader of this blog (or the Hiring blog), you can see that I’m not shy or demure. I’m blunt and direct. And in most circumstances, I manage to straight-talk without hurting anyone, even myself. But that wasn’t the case earlier this week. I was writing the PM book, concentrating. The phone […]
I have an all-in-one machine, a fax/copier/scanner/printer, that I use for copying, scanning and primarily faxing. It’s fine fax machine. And it’s a great copier. But when I hook it up to my computer for scanning to a file, it falls apart. Half the time (or more), my computer can’t establish a USB connection
I’m trying to describe the costs of multitasking. Here’s what I’ve got so far: There are three parts to multitasking: Stopping the work you’re doing. The stopping cost is the time it takes to mark your place, save your work, etc. You haven’t stopped thinking about what you’re doing, but when you stop to
I’m finally back home after 4 weeks on the road. Yes, I was completely nuts to spend 4 weeks away. My office is a disaster, and so is my email. (My domain name is being spoofed, so I’m getting thousands of returned failed email messages a day. Pain in the tush to process.) So,
One of my clients said to me, “There’s no one who doesn’t need a boss.” He meant it as “Everyone needs someone to check with, to make sure they’re headed in the right direction.” I agree.
I’ve encountered a number of projects where people didn’t know the context of their work. As developers, they were working on the thing they had to develop or fix today. They might remember what they had done yesterday, but there was no sense that they knew what they needed to do tomorrow, or that they
I facilitated a management problem-solving session at the STARWest conference yesterday. When I was debriefing the activities, one participant said he’s met a bunch of testers and test managers who had a “siege” mentality. He was surprised by that. I’m still surprised when I meet people like that. I sometimes see developers who feel
I’m thrilled to be going back to the Softed folks (in Wellington, Auckland, and Sydney) who are doing a project management conference next March. I’m working out with them what topics I’ll be covering. I have a 3-hour workshop in the afternoon. It’s enough time to cover a couple of topics with interactions and
Keith Ray, Dale Emery, and I are writing books. Keith and Dale are tracking their writing with spreadsheets. Dale is posting his progress online. You can see his Oct 8 progress.I decided they were on to something, and start tracking my progress in a spreadsheet also. I have about 35,000 words written. I have about
A colleague asked me what to do when you’re in an iteration and you realize that the story you’re working on spawns other requirements. I suggested that the person add them to the product backlog (the backlog of everything you want to do for the product) and re-rank the requirements in preparation for the next