“Robert, do you have a minute?” Cheryl, the development manager, stood at her director’s door. “Sure, let me save this.” Robert stopped what he was doing. “You look worried. Come on over and let’s sit at the visitors table. This looks serious.” “Well, it is. I’m not sure how to say it, so I’ll just […]
In my first management role, I “managed” one person. My managee didn’t need much management. He guided me into how to manage him more than I managed him. He saved me from making too many mistakes. It was great practice for me. Later in my management career, I managed a “team” of 15 testers. They
“Cindy, I need to add three more people to your team.” Patrick, the CTO, leaned in the doorway. He turned, about to walk away. “Wait a sec. We need to discuss this. You don’t get to drop that bombshell and leave. Why do you want me to hire more people?” Cindy looked concerned. “No, I
“James, I need to talk to you about Bill.” Susanne shut the door and sat down in the visitor chair. “OK, what’s up?” James stopped typing at his computer. He walked to his visitor table and sat down. “I just walked by Bill’s office. He’s leaning back in his chair. I could swear he’s snoring!”
I was in the midst of an assessment when the CIO came to me, and shut the door. “I have a serious question for you.” I nodded for him to continue. I put aside my papers to show him I was providing him my undivided attention. “I’m thinking of offshoring all the testers. What do
“George is on his offshoring rampage again,” Cindy said as she slumped down in Ted’s visitor chair. Ted saved his document and turned around. “Oh? Want to tell me about it?” “I need more testers for the feature teams we’re starting, right? I told him. I showed him the project portfolio and the projects we
Barry bustled into Sam’s office. “Hey Sam, I need to see how these teams are doing— compared to each other. How do you compare teams?” “I don’t compare teams,” said Sam. “Why are you trying to compare teams?” “So I can tell who’s being more productive and who’s slacking off,” Barry replied. “But I thought
Every so often, managers want to compare teams. You’ve heard this in several ways: Managers want teams to “normalize” their story points, so they can better predict the cost or schedule for the rest of the backlog in large programs. This doesn’t work, but managers want to do it anyway. Managers want to compare teams
Sally, the project manager, strode confidently into her meeting with John, the CIO. She’d reviewed the roadmap with the product owner and had discussed the risks with the project team. She was sure, based on the first few iterations, that the project was off to a good start. Sure, she knew that projects rarely stayed
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