I saw this post yesterday, A Simple Suggestion to Help Phase Out All-Male Panels at Tech Conferences. And, I wondered what I would do, if I was male. Let me provide a little more context. I had a conference call with some of the Prag editors just a couple of weeks ago. The Prags publish […]
“We have mandatory all-hands meeting this afternoon. I’m going to have a stomachache then,” David said. “What do you mean?” Jenny asked. “You haven’t even had lunch yet. How do you know? What are you talking about?” “Look, you know what our wonderful division head, Martin, is going to say. He’s not going to take
Solve Problems With the Rule of Three You may have noticed in these Pragmatic Manager emails that I articulate a problem I’ve seen and then offer you a minimum of three potential reasonable solutions. Sometimes, I even offer four solutions. That’s because I use the Rule of Three to help develop these solutions—and it works.
Summary: As a lead and manager, your job to remove obstacles that impede work is most important. But of all the obstacles you find, whether they be people’s perceptions, bottlenecks in the work flow, or an ill-fitted chair or desk, which do you tackle first? Johanna Rothman has cleared countless of obstacles for numerous teams.
I have fixed the how-do-I-get-up-in-the-morning-when-Mark-is-traveling problem. I bought a new Sangean RCR-5 Digital AM/FM Clock Radio with a Sangean Pillow Speaker – #PS-100 – D/S (I love them both) and now, I hear the alarm, no matter what side I sleep on! I don’t have the problem of blasting my good ear with noise that
The Problem Statement is Not Always the Problem I recently gave a “talk” at my local SPIN group. They wanted me to do a small version of a session I normally lead at AYE. I organized and reorganized and reorganized and finally developed what I hoped was a one-hour experiential session on coaching. I realized if
by Johanna Rothman. This article was originally published in Software Development, September 2001. We all have problems at work, sometimes more than we can easily handle. Managers tend to encounter more sticky situations because of the nature of our job. And not only do we have our own problems—others often ask us to solve theirs, as
© 2001 Johanna Rothman. This article was originally published in STQE, Volume 2, Number 5, September/October 2001. “Test is always at the end of the schedule. We never test for as long as we need to. We get whipped around by whatever the developers do. It just isn’t fair.” “We don’t have enough testers.” “My management
by Johanna Rothman. Originally published in Cutter’s Business-IT Alignment E-Mail Advisor, December 8, 1999. I was recently with a client that was having trouble completing its high-level design spec for a key internal system. The spec the designer delivered was 50 pages of dense text in a small type size. The sponsor refused to read
by Johanna Rothman. This article was originally published in Software Devleopment Magazine, December 1999. I’ve had great managers, and I’ve had lousy managers. The great managers always seemed to be pushing forward, solving problems and thinking about better ways to do things. The lousy managers repeated their mistakes on project after project; they claimed to