“Hey, Johnny, what’s Sheryl doing? She’s been in meetings the last week. She’s only come out for our one-on-ones. I’ve been trying to catch her. I need to ask her some questions about how to give feedback to Cathy about this problem.” Terry pointed to his architecture picture. “I know this architecture is not going […]
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
“Sally, I need you to stop testing on this project and move over to Dan’s project.” “Are you serious, Ben? I just got here a month ago. I just started to learn what’s going on. I finally have the trust of the team. I haven’t worked with these guys before. I found a nice, juicy
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
Josiah, the VP of engineering, called his directors meeting to order. “First on our agenda is my plan for the reorganization of our department,” he said. The directors looked at each other, puzzled. “I’ve noticed that several of the project teams are having trouble working together, so I’ve decided that we need a reorganization back
Long ago, when I was a young developer at an anonymous company, one of my managers was disappointed with my progress. “I know how long the work should take. If I was doing the work, it would be done by now,” he huffed at me. “Really?” I could have stopped there. I didn’t. “If you
Dave, the CIO, strode down the hall to Sarah’s office. Sarah’s the delivery services manager. He walked in, carefully closed the door, and sat down. “Sarah, we need to talk. I don’t like the ship you’re running here. Everyone leaves between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. They just walk out! How can you expect to
Janet hesitated before going down the hall to David’s office. She turned around and sat back down and sighed. Steve stopped by her cubicle and said, “What’s wrong?” “I have this problem and I need to ask David a question. I’m really stumped. But he’s going to tell me, ‘Don’t bring me a problem without
I have another management myth up on Stickyminds. This one is Management Myth 15: I Need People to Work Overtime. Managers, especially senior managers, want people to be “invested” and “motivated” to do a great job. Often, the only measure they have for that is to see people work overtime. Why? Because that’s what senior
“Juliet, I really screwed up big time. What am I going to do?” Romeo moaned as he plunked himself down in his VP’s office. “I can tell you, but I can’t admit it to my people. They will never respect me again.” “If they discover what you did—and they will—they will never forgive you if