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...
Keith Ray posts this snippet of conversation: Ron Jeffries posted his email conversation with Jon Eaves on XP mailing list in “Bug tracking vs user stories” [ jon ] “Projects that have developers working on multiple simultaneous projects have a 30%...
Bob Lee & Keith Ray both commented on my post comments on my post Unskilled and Unaware of It. Bob says: The other interesting point in the article is that competent people *assume* that others are as competent. “It’s easy (for me) so it must be easy...
Stephen Norrie (an avid and well-organized collector of articles related to software development, technology, business and humans) pointed me to this study: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated...
Alan Francis writes about programmer productivity in a piece titled you know who you are:More from Steve McConnell’s After The Gold Rush 2nd Ed – http://www.stevemcconnell.com/SoftFactors.pdfThe range in productivity says that some programmers are much...
Dale Emery makes a thoughtful response to my post Projects that will not die on his weblog : Success, Belief and Identity . Our mental models, beliefs, and sense of self do play a big part in how we see the world. what we see in the world, and how we respond when...
I came across this article on Stephen Norrie’s blog: HBS Working Knowledge: Leadership: When Bad Ideas Won’t Die Why do smart companies put so much energy into doomed products? University of Paris-based Isabelle Royer tackles this thorny issue in this...
Frank Patrick responded to my post on phoney actuals with a couple of pithy quotes about the perils of one-dimensional measures (for lots more on this read Robert Austin’s MMPO): “Tell me how you’ll measure me, and I’ll tell you how I...
I’m back from speaking at SD West, where I met several project managers who were promoted on the “Coder on Tuesday, Project Manager on Wednesday” program (similar to the “Coder on Monday, Manager on Tuesday” program). Expect to hear more...
Two recent posts (Focus, Focus, Focus and Breakthrough Thinking on Worker Productivity) talk about the effects of multitasking and interruptions. Spread a person across 4-5 tasks and interrupt her with phone calls, drop-ins, emails, beeps, and meetings and pretty soon...
Bouncing off the evils of multitasking, C. Keith Ray (who just started his own blog) has this to say about how pair programming can counter some workplace interruptions: Two effects pair programming has on tasking… in my experience… It keeps the people...
Yesterday after work, my spousal unit and I started our usual how-was-your-day ritual. He reported on a project he’s just started and a meeting with a colleague from a previous job. I told him about the article I’m editing and a conversation I had with a...
Tim Van Tongeren gives an example of how posting project information publicly can open up communicaiton on the project team This just won’t happen if the plan is sitting in a scheduling tool (MS Project or your favorite flavor) on the project manager’s...
