Jerry Weinberg finds wisdom in Japanese proverbs in this post on the AYE blog. If I were to give advice to a young professional starting out in the world, I could do no better than quote three Japanese proverbs: We learn little from victory, much from defeat. So, do...
One of my readers asked me to explain how I use Next Action — which is a little different than described in David Allen’s book. So maybe I should call it something else like “Smallest Lever.” I use Smallest Lever for tasks or projects that a) I...
A while back I listened to David Allen’s Getting Things Done on audio book. (I remember noticing passive voice—which struck me as odd in a book about taking action.) I haven’t implemented the system–or purchased the gear. But I am practicing Next Action. For me,...
Every so often, someone declares “We don’t need managers, we need leaders.” Statements like this imply that people are either one or the other, and that management is somehow less valuable than leadership. I don’t buy the idea that management and leadership are...
Two bits that I came across in my reading this week are sticking together in my head. In his post, Imitation is the Saddest Form of Flattery, Pragmatic Dave talks about other publishers imitating what they do at the Pragmatic Bookshelf. Andy and I have tried to think...
I see (and hear about) more and more companies that are jumping on the Agile bandwagon. All too often, a top managers direct the organization to implement Scrum or another Agile method.Sometimes implementing Agile top down succeeds in establishing the a few...
When I work with new managers (and some managers who have been around for a while), some of the first questions I ask are: How does your unit/department/team contribute to generating revenue for the company?How does the work of your unit contribute to gaining new...
I’ve been thinking about auditions since I had a conversation with a friend who hired a bunch of analysts who all reported they’d worked with use cases, but when it came to actually working with use cases didn’t have a clue. I asked my friend if he’d used auditions as...
Last week I did a feedback workshop at the AYE conference. I do this workshop from time to time, and while each workshop is unique, and there are consistent patterns. As I walk around the room and listen to people practice giving feedback, there’s always at least one...
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....
