Summary: If you’ve been tasked with creating an agile team, first consider what differentiates an agile team from a non-agile team. In this week’s column, Johanna Rothman highlights six behaviors of people on successful agile teams that candidates for an agile team should possess. Are agile team members different from people on other teams? Yes […]
I’m in Albuquerque this week at a debriefing workshop. When I teach, I don’t just read PowerPoint slides. I do use handouts (and frequently PPT) to guide what I’m going to say. However, I add lots of stories, and use interactive activities to drive specific points home to the workshop participants. The way to extract
“I need another tester for my team” – Test Manager “I’m looking for a developer/architect/someone senior for my team” – Development manager Two managers, two teams. Although each manager has a group he calls a team, the teams are quite different. The test manager has a pool of people whom he assigns to projects in
I maintain the AYE web site as part of my responsibilities this year for the conference. I post the news, the new articles, and do the general updating. Monday, I posted one of Don Gray‘s articles, Shifting the Burden – Whose Monkey Is It? Except, Don and I had both made a mistake. Don
I’m in lovely Perth, Australia this weekend, staying with some friends of mine. The husband was explaining how he makes sure his department buys coffee, tea, milk, sugar for everyone in the department. “It costs us about $2000 to supply the department for a year. In return, people congregate around the coffee, discussing work.
The two articles I found most telling about Carly Fiorina’s departure from HP are Worst. CEO. Ever. and Carly Fiorina and management. High tech organizations require a vision (from the CEO), a budget, and room for innovation. Maybe I missed it, but Fiorina didn’t provide any vision, except for cost-cutting. When will senior managers
If you’ve hired new people or transferred people into your group, you know that they’re not immediately productive when they start. If you’re lucky, they start to be useful in a month, but you most likely spend closer to six months or even a year before they raise the entire group’s productivity. One technique for
In a question to yesterday’s post, Bill asked about the effect of multiple ideas for problem solving: “Do readers feel they have to follow one of your multiple True Ways now? Or does the multiplicity meta-message encourage them to generate even more ideas?” Sometimes and Yes. Some people are even more impatient than I
I’ve been thinking a lot about some of my clients’ problems managing their projects. Two of my clients are stuck on the notion that there is a silver bullet, one right way to solve their problem. Then I read Steve Norrie’s blog entry this morning, and saw this quote: “Nothing is more dangerous than an
In my travels last week, I contracted a cold. And of course, life doesn’t stop just because I have a cold and my brain doesn’t work. I still have writing, phone calls, consulting, and driving to manage. I managed to ask for help with the writing. As soon as anyone heard me on the phone,