I’ve been reading a pretty good book lately, it’s the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s a really good book, not dry or textbook-y at all. Mr. Carnegie keeps the reader engaged with lots of anecdotes and stories about real life people. I highly encourage this book for anyone, […]
There’s two trains of thought in the business world: that the manager needs to be technical and understand what’s happening on the team, or that the manager doesn’t need to be technical and it’s really just about process and metrics and general management skills. I can see the validity to both sides, but I think […]
Who really likes meetings? I mean, I’m sure some people do, somewhere. But it seems like a lot of people don’t. So many don’t, in fact, that Scrum and Sprints are designed to minimize meetings. But let’s look at the Agile Manifesto. It says, “We favor…” Individuals and interactions Customer collaboration Responding to change In […]
You can have fixed time and variable scope, or variable time and fixed scope, but a product owner can’t pick both. Lately, I’ve heard this quote several times. At first, it makes sense. A product owner/stakeholder can either tell the team the requirements, and the team can then define the schedule. Or the product owner […]
If you want your company to be agile, then your organizational chart is critically important to your ability to execute. (This is assuming you believe in Boyd’s Law: “Speed of iteration beats quality of iteration”.) But why does the Org Chart matter? What does that have to do with an organization’s agility? Let’s start with […]
A very common question that I see asked is: Should I make the transition from technical to management? Let’s talk about this. Why are you even asking the question? The answer is probably because you’re looking for a raise, or for career growth, and your company/peers/mentors/society is telling you that making this transition is the […]
Why doesn’t the classic PMP process work with software? The official Program Management Body of Knowledge provides a well-defined process workflow for the initiation and execution of projects. At a very high level, the workflow is something like this: Define Scope -> Create WBS (deliverables list) -> Create Activity List -> Estimate Activity Durations -> […]
I realized after this last blog post I had more I wanted to say, mostly to clarify some points. In that last post, I discussed the differing management approaches of more strict project and task tracking (Type A), as opposed to a laissez faire approach where staff is communicated strategic goals and then given free […]
I know a lot of people like to tout Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) as the future, and have all these success stories. For those of you not in the know, ROWE is where there are no office hours or expectations of a 40-hour work week. Instead employees are given goals to meet and as […]
“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.” – Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980 Many of you have probably seen the movie Gladiator. A key point near the beginning of the movie is the Roman army, under the command of Maximus, defeats the Germanic horde in a brilliant […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 