Bad management is easy. Well, let me rephrase that. It’s easy to perform management badly. But, it’s not so easy to perform management well. From the outside, it can seem as if management is effortless. But that doesn’t mean that good management is easy. Early in my management career, I returned home one day, plopped […]
This is the last in this series of organizing the agile program management posts. It won’t be the last of all the posts, it’s just the last in the series of organizing posts. If I’d realized how many words I was writing in each post I’m not sure I would have started the series. Yes,
I read Metrics with Impact by Michiel van Genuchten and Les Hatton in the July/August IEEE Software, pp 99-101 last week. They discuss a metric: Compound Annual Growth, CAGR for software. CAGR is interesting to me, because I’ve actually measured it before. Here are some graphs (no numeric data) to describe what happens in different
We got here because I started with Managing the Stream of Features in an Agile Program. That got me to Organizing an Agile Program, Part 1:Introduction, Organizing an Agile Program, Part 2: Networks for Managing Agile Programs, Organizing an Agile Program Part 3: Large Programs Demand Servant Leadership. Sorry I got behind. Life interfered. Some
I have an article up on TechTarget, called Alternative project management styles are faster than multitasking. I had originally called the article “Multitasking makes you stupid-you have alternatives.” 🙂 There’s my Queen of the Career-limiting conversation thing going again. Would you have read the article with the original title? Eh, maybe not. In any case,
What’s the single biggest point of leverage you have in changing your team? It’s not the process. After the manager, it’s the people on your team. (Your manager is the single biggest point of leverage because of the political leverage the manager has.) This is why it is so important to become great at hiring
Many years ago, I started a job as a contract manager, and it became clear I had a big problem. I had developers who knew one area of the code well. I had testers who knew not much of any area of the code well, even though they had worked for the organization for many
I gave a talk last week at Better Software/Agile Development, called Exploding Management Myths. This is my first talk based on some of my management myths. Yes, the ones I’ve been writing for the last 18 months. Yes, I have more in me 🙂 I have posted the slides and the audio from my talk
I delivered a keynote at Let’s Test in Sweden last week, “Becoming a Kick-Ass Test Manager.” A lovely gentleman, Aleksis Tulonen, recorded the audio. Thank you, Aleksis! I attempted to marry the audio to the slides. I was not successful. However, the audio is up on slideshare. You can download the slides, page through them
I gave a talk at Devs in the ‘Ditch last week when I was in London. I posted the slides on slideshare: Overcoming Three Pitfalls of Transitioning to Agile. The very nice people at 7digital made a video and posted it, too. If you can take the time, watch the entire video. Rob Bowyer gave