Today I chatted with yet another person who works for a company that is moving to resource pools: Technical people fill out an inventory of their technical skills and become part of a “resource pool,” made up of all the people in the organization who are...
I’m at Ken Schwaber’s ScrumMaster class in Denver.Yesterday we when through the start of a little project, including meetings with the customer to understand his priorities and desires for the software. We were advised on the importance of avoiding jargon,...
I was at the SD Best Practices conference earlier this week, both speaking and sitting in on sessions.One session I attended cited data on the average time spent on-task — working directly on a task that shows up on the project plan. The average task time across...
Johanna Rothman points to demotivators — a take off on those vapid posters that extol the virtues of TEAMWORK & QUALITY.I suspect that some people actually believe that putting up posters that say “Teamwork” will engender teamwork. It’s...
I used to work for a big corporation. (Now I work for a small corporation, a corporation of one.)Every so often, Management at the big corporation would notice that there was a little problem in the area of morale: people leaving in droves, few applicants, failing...
I’ve been building a new working relationship the last couple of months, or at least a new sort of working relationship. I’ve known Diana Larsen for a few years, and we’ve worked on the annual Retrospective Facilitators Gathering. For the Retro...
I was talking the other day to a friend of mine, Tom, who was promoted into management last year. Tom’s story is not unusual. In fact it’s quite common.Tom was the top technical contributor in his group– he had the deepest knowledge, best skills, and...
Tim Bacon offers this list of questions for XP coaches:Reflecting: “So if I understand correctly then what you’re saying is…”Prompting: “Have you considered [doing] / [thinking about]…”Positing: “What if [this were true]...
Ned Batchelder sent me a link to his post, Engineers are People. I really like the way he compares emotions and hunger. Emotions are like hungerImagine workers weren’t allowed to eat lunch or snack during the day, and hunger was considered a weakness that should...
Johanna Rothman writes about the importance of a written job offer on her Hiring blog. Yes, get the offer in writing. And pay attention to how the offer process goes. A friend of my recently went through a protracted process where the hiring manager would offer, then...
Tim Bacon cites another cause of monoculture: Monoculture emerges very quickly in software development teams that impose a ‘standard’ IDE and OS, that use a predictive (not adaptive) lifecycle process, or where developers are expected to work the same...
Steve Norrie points us to LeGuin’s Law from Jerry Weinberg’s More Secrets of Consulting. It’s a great quote from Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: “When action grows unprofitable, gather information. When information grows...
A friend of mine is learning to ask for help. He’s a smart guy. He’s been successful in the corporate world, and before that he was successful in school.And that might be part of his difficulty. We are taught that asking for help is a *bad thing.* Asking...
The other day I was talking to a friend who is trying to accomplish the work he used to do with a staff of three with just himself and one other (junior) person. “We’re all stretched so thin that if one person takes a day of vacation, it’s a...
Brian Marick posts this note he wrote asking for friendliness and civility in a mailing list debate.I’m with Brian. Debate is an argument between opposing points of views. Debaters support their own position and focus on weaknesses in the other position. People...
As you know from earlier posts, poorly run, time-wasting, bad meetings peeve me. I’ve read that improving the quality and productivity of meetings can improve productivity for the organization by up to 15%. When you consider that many people, especially managers,...
Awhile back, I attended a workshop where a recently promoted manager, Renee, complained about being overwhelmed by volume of work she had to accomplish. She had recently added two people to her staff, but she was still overwhelmed. The other people in the workshops...
Alan Francis posts this piece on compromise from Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable”: The old saying is right: “A camel is a horse designed by committee.” If the goal of marketing is to be extreme...
A recent HBR article asks Are You Supporting Your B Players?It’s a good question. Many managers focus exclusively on the low-performers, believing that their job is to bring them up to adequate performance. It’s a huge investment in time and emotion (as...
Brian Marick reports on his blog that he’s ducking out on a trip to the water park to attend ScrumMaster training. Here’s how he explains the difference between a conventional project manager and a ScrumMaster:What’s a ScrumMaster? The closest...
