Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Using One-on-Ones to Build Trust Announcements =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Using One-on-Ones to Build Trust A colleague of mine just arrived at a new company as a manager. He’s inherited a group where management was (and still is) a dirty word. Due to some of the previous managers’ actions, the technical […]
Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Becoming Comfortable with One-on-Ones Announcements =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Becoming Comfortable with One-on-Ones Last month’s feature article was about building trust with one-on-one meetings. In response, a reader mailed me this question: “How long should it take to become comfortable with one-on-ones?” Ok. Here’s the standard answer: It depends. It depends
Senior managers — the people who make strategic product decisions — need to know when they can expect those products to release. The organization of current product releases against a timeline is a project portfolio. And, planning the project portfolio in an agile environment is different — but not harder — than planning the project
Summary: If someone on your project team isn’t working up to par, it might take more than a simple showing of your disapproval to put him on the right track. Johanna Rothman suggests trying specific and useful feedback—show your employees the light before you show them the door. Margaret, a manager, was concerned about one of
I’m in Israel now (for workshops). I was traveling through Newark yesterday, and had to change terminals between the domestic flight that got me to Newark and the international flight that was going to leave from Newark. Turns out, a bunch of other people had to change terminals too. The signs are so bad,
In my project management class a few weeks ago, I did an activity on feedback. In my experience, many project managers are also functional managers, so they need to give feedback. And, in highly collaborative teams, the person called “manager” isn’t the only one to give and receive feedback. One team got stuck. One
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 met a manager recently who relayed his technique for making sure his testers stayed focused on their jobs. “Our defect-tracking system logs people off after 30 minutes of idle time. If they’re logged off, I know they’re not working.” This was a new one for me. I’ve heard of counting lines of code.