(c) 2007-2010 Esther Derby A ScrumMaster recently asked me if he should take over responsibility for year-end performance evaluations since he was closer to the work than the functional manager for the team. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this question, and as...
If you’re a hiring manager, you know that a typical hiring process emphasizes technical skills, functional skills, and industry knowledge. Interpersonal skills are near the bottom of the list, if they make the list at all. However, if you’re hiring for an...
Hiring managers (and HR departments) expend enormous effort finding people with the right skills to fill open positions. But, skills are only half the equation for success. Many years ago, psychologist Kurt Lewin reduced the mysteries of human behavior to this simple...
Managers–like everyone else–need feedback to know how and where to adjust their actions. Managers may receive feedback from their managers. That’s necessary, but not sufficient. In addition to hearing how things look from above, managers need feedback from...
As test and development managers, we pay attention to developing technical personnel, but what about managers? Do we do enough to help manager and team leads develop and improve their leadership skills–especially when we are those managers? Some companies, GE...
We’ve long lived with the assumption that the people at the top of the organizations are the ones who understand the business. They understand the market, the product, the customers. They hold the financial information about how the company makes money and the...
(c) 2010 Esther Derby I recently spoke to a senior manager who wanted to know how “agile” his company was compared to other companies. When I asked what he’d gain from that information, he responded that then he’d know what practices the...
Last summer I participated in a seminar. The format included group discussion, and discuss we did. But one member of the group, Bernard, didn’t discuss so much as pontificate…at length, and often on topics that were tenuously connected to the subject matter of the...
This article first appeared on stickyminds.com Few people enjoy meetings that waste time in swirling discussions. Fewer still like meetings where their ideas and opinions are solicited and then ignored. Retrospective leaders (and anyone else who leads group...
Retrospectives are an essential part of Scrum. But too often, when I talk to Scrum teams, they tell me that they’ve stopped doing retrospectives. “We’ve run out of things to improve,” one ScrumMaster said. Another complained that after six sprints, they were saying...
