Rant on. There’s a flame-fest on the scrumdevelopment list about the use of “resources” or “people” to describe the human beings on projects. I like “humans” or “human beings” or “people.” And, I actually prefer “resources” to “man-hours.” I can live with “people-hours,” and prefer that to “resource.” I bet you’re a little surprised. I’ve […]
Alan Weiss, author of Million Dollar Consulting, advises consultants to drop the bottom 10% of their work every year. That way you have to force yourself to grow and offer new (frequently more lucrative) offerings. The same advice applies to managers. When I teach management, I explain that managers have three responsibilities: To deliver
Recently, I gave a talk about useful practices–things to consider adopting/adapting in your organization. (I don’t believe in best practices, the idea that something could be best in all situations is just not credible. See UsefulPractices for more discussion. One of the techniques I discussed was creating smoke tests for the build. We started
I met someone at the Software Development conference this week who told me he had too many people to meet with them all–even on a biweekly basis. I asked him how many people he managed. “30.” That’s not a typo; that’s the number between 29 and 31. I asked why he had so many
I’m crazy-busy with the finishing of Behind Closed Doors, so I’m starting another series of blog posts, this time about management myths. (When I’m in a series of posts, it’s easier for me to stay focused on writing a post every or every other day.) I’ve worked with many managers and teams who think
In Who Wants to be a Technical Lead? I promised I’d talk about succession planning. Here’s the general idea: as someone who works for a living, your job should be to work yourself out of your current job by learning, practicing, and mastering some new skills. The less work experience you have, the easier this
I had lunch with a friend-of-a-friend today. She’s considering moving to a process improvement position. I suggested she not move from a technical lead to a process improvement position — I don’t trust staff positions in this not-yet-robust economy. So I asked her why not do process improvement where she is, in her circle
I was at the Rational User Conference last week. I took away one significant idea from the keynotes and one of the track sessions: Writing software, according to Grady Booch is a “priviledge and a responsibility.” Systems are becoming more complex because we need them to do more things faster. We need people who
Now that I’m back from vacation, I’m catching up on my reading. I enjoyed David Anderson’s Management versus Leadership on ‘The Apprentice’ which prompted me to think about what I would have done in Kwame’s place. It took me a long time to learn, but a manager always has the option of firing people who
Oh dear. I was not sufficiently articulate in my last post. Both Frank and David in their comments asked about capacity, the output of the organization over time. That will teach me to post when I’m tired. (Maybe.) Let me try this again. In each of these projects, senior management wanted more features than