©2002 Johanna Rothman Who’s working hard in your organization? One senior manager, Cyril, noted the cars in the parking lot on the weekend, as his measure of who was truly committed to the project. Cyril also noticed when people arrived at work and when they left. Cyril thought that measuring his staff’s office-time would help […]
©2002 Johanna Rothman You’re a project manager who’s just been assigned the biggest project of your life. You’ve planned the project work with your project team. You’ve gathered the project plan and the project schedule, for your upcoming meeting with the Operations Committee, OC, to explain how you’re going to manage the project and when
© 2001 Johanna Rothman “New England high tech jobs going unfilled” — headline in a recent Boston Globe “If you have more open requisitions than candidates, hire the ones who can breathe.” — Jerry Weinberg, private conversation Even the popular press has caught on to the software “crisis” of not enough people. The Globe reporter
© 2000 Johanna Rothman “We’re repeatable. We consistently and repeatably do the same stupid things over and over again.” – senior test engineer Process improvement experts emphasize the importance of having a repeatable process. I’ve found that the term “repeatable” is often misused to mean “not entirely chaotic.” In process improvement terminology, “repeatable” means that
© 2000 Johanna Rothman A recent client, Bob, asked me to assess their major project. “Johanna, it’s so late, I don’t know what to do. If we don’t get it out on time, we’ll miss the market window. I can’t believe any of the estimates I get anymore, the project manager hasn’t met a single
©2000 Johanna Rothman Many of us are in “constant hiring” mode–continually receiving resumes, interviewing people, and deciding on whether to hire various candidates. Are you asking questions that get you informative answers about your candidates? There are many potential kinds of interview questions and situations: closed, open, hypothetical, meta questions, auditions, and rhetorical questions are
©2000 Johanna Rothman “I can’t make a decision today to save my life.” Susan, VP Engineering “Everything I touch today turns into garbage.” Joe, VP Engineering “I just want to hurt everyone when I can’t get anything done. Why should they have a good day, when I’m having a lousy day?” Cyril, CEO
© 1999 Johanna Rothman To ensure a successful product in the marketplace, an organization must bring all the company’s functions together: Product development and testing, marketing, training, customer support, sales, etc. The manager who organizes and schedules the intra-company tasks is frequently called the program manager. One of my clients refers to program management as
©1999 Johanna Rothman Effectively using your influence is an art, the art of getting other people to do the things you want them to — and willingly. Many of us have opportunities to practice using our influence when we have responsibility for results, but not specific managerial authority. To be effective in these collaborative/consensus situations,
©1999 Johanna Rothman “With man’s great ability to think, reason, and compute, we can now pinpoint most of our current problems. The trouble is that we can’t solve them.” I walked in, and put my briefcase down. I fished out my dress shoes, and had one sneaker off before Ted barged in. “JR, I can’t