Brian Marick has a pointer to this piece on Martin Fowler’s bliki: MF Bliki: WhatIsFailure The Standish Group’s CHAOS report has been talking of billions of wasted dollars on IT projects for many years. The 34% success rate is actually a improvement over...
Johanna Rothman has this to say in the latest issue of her ezine “Pragmatic Manager:” Meetings are a fact of our lives. Most of the time we don’t need a facilitator to help move our meeting along; we can manage to accomplish the goals of the meeting...
This weekend, I was talking to a friend about her relatively new job. She’s pleased that she’s gotten some training in new practices, and is able to use them on the job. And she wishes she could go back to the training session. She’s an OT, but I...
I’m at STAR East in Orlando this week. (Tough duty, but someone has to do it!) This year, STAR if offering something new: Testing Dialogues are facilitated sessions where professionals in the testing arena explore some of the challenges they face. There are two...
Not too long ago, I found myself struggling I was writing the Tech Speak column for the current issue of STQE. (More accurately, I was slogging through a string of first drafts that left me unexcited, uninvolved, and frustrated.) Eventually, I asked for help, and my...
Oh, dear. Oh, dear.Sunday afternoon, as I was getting ready to fly out to visit a client, I cast about for some airplane reading. I found a thin little book called Managing Your Boss, by Sandi Mann.In the section titled “Emotional Management,” the author...
Johanna Rothman asks, in a comment on my last post on Collaboration and Teamwork, “How do we build these skills? These are the “soft” skills that many of us struggle to build.”I talk about what’s worked for me and what I’ve seen...
Laurent Bossavit quotes these instructions from a college exam for testers: Incipient.oO{}: Certifications, degrees, teamwork “It is essential that you work on this exam ALONE with no input or assistance from other people. You MAY NOT discuss your progress or...
How could I have forgotten that classic: They’re all number one priority! Usually uttered in response to a question like: What’s the top priority? In this case, the speaker may not know what the top priorities are. Or he may believe that ranking the tasks...
The overheard conversation between a harried developer and her manager (“You’ll just have to multitask!”) reminded me of other management exhortations I have heard. Failure is not an option! This is usually repeated with great vigor and conviction by...
