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...
