Bob Sutton has an intriguing post, A Surprising Study of Infant Mortality Rates: Evidence-Based Management Meets Evidence Medicine. One of the surprising conclusions: One kind of collaboration was linked to higher mortality rates. When front-line employees became more involved in unit governance — doing things like being involved in decisions about who was hired and […]
In For a more productive team, put the pressure on (within reason), Chris Hoover recommends a little pressure to help the procrastinators un-procrastinate, and help people get their work done on time. I only sort-of agree. Everyone has their own amount of pressure, and what’s good for you is not good for me. But working
Last week, at Agile 2007, I had a fascinating conversation about geography/directions with a colleague. I explained that I needed to visit someplace and walk or drive around until I really understood where everything was. He said, “Oh, you think in postcards.” I can read a map, and write down directions. It all makes
Joshua asked me to clarify what I meant by implementing by architecture. Here’s my picture-story. When a team implements by architecture, they tend to be functionally-based teams implementing across the architecture. When a team implements by feature, they are cross-functional teams. When teams implement by feature, they do what’s needed in whatever part
A colleague asked how to deal with this situation. “It’s clear Brad is being a jerk. I’m working with him on how to be less of a jerk. But Susie asked me today when I’m going to do something about the problem–nothing she says seems to make a dent in his behavior. What can I
I was talking with Don Gray this morning about our work on the AYE Conference. I’m the marketing chair, he’s the program chair. We were discussing the sessions we have so far, and I said we could put one of the management sessions into the team effectiveness track. “No,” Don said, “Managers aren’t part
I just posted Hiring For Team Fit. Please post comments here.
Laurent’s post, The team building lunch prompted a bunch of (hopefully now organized) thoughts about the role of food in high tech projects. One of the things I notice when I perform assessments is whether there is some sort of cafeteria or other food-eating place. Projects that have a physical place large enough for
Rick commented on my last post that some engineers think that status checking slows them down. Mark said that engineers push back on demos and pointless measurements and then said in another comment, “progress metrics can always be free.” Here’s how and what I look for, to determine status. If I’m managing a traditionally-planned
Hal posted his take on creating faster cheaper projects. (See Creating Faster Cheaper Projects.) I see that I did not make my assumptions clear in my original post. Hal had three problems (at least!) with my post: Fewer people increase the length of the project. The longer the project, the more the requirements will change