In my talk at PNSQC, I told the story of a manager who knew that multitasking was sapping productivity, but chose to assign people to Multiple projects anyway. This manager had a bunch of different stakeholders to please –all with different interests and...
In a recent post, I described a situation where one “brilliant” person is actually reducing the overall productivity of a software team. He’s writing lots of code, but no one else can figure it out. He claims that his teammates are just too stupid,...
It seems that every few months I have a similar conversation: Someone asks me how to give feedback to a difficult person. This week the conversation was with a manager I’ll call Toni.”What is it about this person that makes it difficult for you to give him...
Jerry Weinberg sums up a discussion on what is desirable in a requirements document with this statement:The thing that I want most in a requirement (whether it’s in a document or in somebody’s head or gut, is understanding. I want to customer (goal donor...
Rachel reports on a different way to read a book based on Tony Buzan’s work. I’ve used a similar method called Charting to read articles and books. Actually, I’m not sure “reading” is the right term, because Charting feels more...
In SD PEOPLE & PROJECTS email newsletter, Amit Asaravala reports on the results of little survey on what managers do to build (or destroy trust): … respondents who said they trust their managers praised them for being honest, fair and open-minded: “I...
Over on Jerry Weinberg’s SHAPE Forum, there’s a discussion on what we’ve learned about XP over the last few years. One of the themes is that success depends on the human interaction skills of the people involved. (I guess we could say that about any...
Last week, my husband attended a mandatory session on sexual harassment at his work.Here’s one of the scenarios that came up:A woman comes to her manager complaining that she’s being harassed. A male co-worker has asked her for a date on three separate...
I spent two days last week facilitating a planning session for asoftware project. I was working with a team from a functional organization with a pretty heavy phase-gate process, and a waterfall way of building. The team was fininsh their “definition”...
It seems to me, that if you want to work with groups or teams–a software project team, for example– it helps to learn how to work with groups or teams.I attended a meeting the other day. In the front of the room was a guy with a flip chart and a marker....
I have a lot of energy for effective feedback. Unfortunately, I haven’t reached all the managers (and just plain folks) in the world yet, so there are still folks out there giving feedback that is veiled, garbled, unactionable, and downright hurtful.Take for...
I’m at Agile2005 this week. I always expect to meet interesting people at this conference, and I haven’t been disappointed.One of the people I’ve met was a reviewer for Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Greate Management (which I co-authored with...
Last week I was in a meeting to decide how to move forward on a project.The conversation was going in circles. I was having trouble following which options were on the table and which were off. Based on what I was hearing, it seemed like others didn’t have a...
A while back, Slacker Manager bemoaned micromanaging colleagues who over use “call colleague X” as thier next action (a la David Allen). And that got me thinking about saying No. Most of us are inclined to accept any task that comes our way at work–...
A colleague applied for a management job at a large national organization — 2 months ago. Aside from a form email acknowledging receipt of his application, he hasn’t heard a word.There’s information about the organization here. Were I in this...
Last week I wrote about peer-to-peer feedback. In response, Liz Keogh offers her story here.It almost always works better when peers resolve their own issues, even when the issues are socially awkward. Had Liz taken this issue to the MD, I suspect the outcome...
Zhiyi Zhang wrote in a comment posted on 6/10:”I realized that I can’t do a good job if I keep wearing multiple hats…It’s quite possible that management pushes to that extreme in the name of agile, knowingly and unknowingly.”This is a...
On Agile teams, traditional job boundaries start to blur. Testers are more involved during development. Developers write tests. Testers and developers help with documentation. Team members pitch in to do what needs to be done. And in this process, they broaden there...
A friend of mine reminded me of a little article I wrote a few years back.And it seems timely to bring it up again: “Accountability” is one of those words I hear a lot in organizations where things aren’t going very well. Everyone wants some one else...
I talk to a manager who had attended one of my feedback workshops.One of his staff members had come to him complaining about another team member who had a habit of eating cookies when they worked together, and was getting crumbs all over his desk and keyboard.Prior to...
