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
©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