Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Using One-on-Ones to Build Trust Announcements =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Using One-on-Ones to Build Trust A colleague of mine just arrived at a new company as a manager. He’s inherited a group where management was (and still is) a dirty word. Due to some of the previous managers’ actions, the technical […]
Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Becoming Comfortable with One-on-Ones Announcements =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Becoming Comfortable with One-on-Ones Last month’s feature article was about building trust with one-on-one meetings. In response, a reader mailed me this question: “How long should it take to become comfortable with one-on-ones?” Ok. Here’s the standard answer: It depends. It depends
Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Starting on Strategic Planning Announcements =-=-=-=-= Feature Article: Starting on Strategic Planning Since Esther and I published Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (see below for the official announcement), I’ve received several emails asking how to do strategic planning for small groups. Here’s an outline of a technique I’ve
Feature Article: Decreasing Project Completion Time, Part 2 Last month, I discussed techniques to decrease project startup time. Now it’s time to look at practices that can decrease project completion time once you’ve started the project. Ask the developers to unit test their code. There are free unit test development tools for Java, C, C++,
The Pragmatic Manager, Volume 2 #1 Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Kill Canceled Projects On the Bookshelf Announcements Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Kill Canceled Projects I’ve worked with several managers and developers who had a difficult time killing cancelled projects. One developer was
Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Decreasing Project Completion Time Announcements On the Bookshelf Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Decreasing Project Completion Time Many organizations have a minimum project duration. They can’t complete a project in less than some number of weeks or months. They
The Pragmatic Manager, Volume 1 #4 Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Use Overtime as a Last Resort Announcements On the Bookshelf Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Use Overtime as a Last Resort Overtime is the last degree of flexibility in a project. Unfortunately, too
The Pragmatic Manager, Volume 1 #3 Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Choosing Facilitation Announcements On the Bookshelf Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Choosing Facilitation Meetings are a fact of our lives. Most of the time we don’t need a facilitator to help move our
The Pragmatic Manager, Volume 1 #1 Feature Article: Three Parts of Estimation Project work estimation has three components: the initial first cut, commonly known as a SWAG (Scientific Wild Tush Guess), tracking the estimate against the actuals, and using the schedule to see what’s happening in your project. Part 1: Initial Estimate If you’re a
The Pragmatic Manager, Volume 1 #2 Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Appreciations, Personalized Thank You’s Telelclass Announcement On the Bookshelf Want to hear more from Johanna? Want to read more of Johanna’s writing? =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Using Appreciations, Personalized Thank You’s The project retrospective was proceeding nicely. We’d had lunch, and we entered the mid-afternoon