I retweeted a link to Here’s a Thing: There’s No Correlation Between a College Degree and Coding Ability. I was a bit surprised by some of the reactions to that link. One colleague said, “I question whether people who wait until a college assignment to learn to code have the same obsessive interest in the topic.” […]
I was thinking about the best projects and teams I know. They work in different industries and have different customers. Some are engineering teams. Some are IT. Some are agile; some aren’t. Some are in transition. One thing they have in common is that they are happy teams. If you asked them to show you
The Northeast is in the midst of the Blizzard of 2015. Right now, I’m sitting snug in my home office, waiting for the blizzard to be over. I still have power and heat, which is great! I was wondering—what do you do on a snow day? If you’re agile and you are accustomed to having
Johanna’s 2014 New Year’s Tips Every year, I write a tips letter for you, instead of suggesting you try resolutions. Maybe you can incorporate one of these tips to make your 2015 more effective. Tip #1: Create time for your thinking work. You have meetings. You have email. You have voicemail, text messages, and more
Summary: Competition between teams does not improve performance. In fact, the added stress may shift team members’ focus from creating a quality product to self-preservation due to fear of failure. Johanna suggests managers emphasize collaboration between teams over competition. “Jonah and Sarah, this next round I want to initiate a little competition to see whose
Summary: It is unfortunate that the department attending to employees is called “Human Resources.” That language colors what managers call people in the organization. But the more you call people “resources,” the more they become interchangeable—and more like desks, or infrastructure, or something that is easily negotiable. Resources are not people. People are not resources.
Have you read The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture? If not, it talks about hiring processes where companies Hire people “just like us” Where candidates can’t tell they are on interviews Where, if you wear a suit, you might be disqualified, because, hey, we don’t wear suits here.
I published another Pragmatic Manager this week, Time for a Decision. It’s about program management decisions, and collaborating across the organization. Do you receive my Pragmatic Manager emails? If you think you are on my list, but are not receiving my emails, let me know. Some of you long-time subscribers are not receiving my emails
Time for a Decision On a recent flight, I sat next to the VP of Sales for a large multinational company. Their new big product in development needs a new pricing structure that requires agreement across the organization. Can he get a decision? No. He’s conducted conference call after conference call for months. No decision.
One of my clients was having trouble with estimating work they had never done before, so I wrote an article explaining spikes. That article is up on agileconnection: Need to Learn More about the Work You’re Doing? Spike It! It was a little serendipity; I taught an estimation workshop right after I explained how to