Monthly Archives: March 2009

The Risks of Providing Negative Feedback

An important part of management and mentoring is the need to provide accurate feedback to employees about their work. The motivation is to reinforce positive actions and behaviors and reduce or end mistakes. It is easy to give praise to … Continue reading

Posted in project management | 1 Comment

Why Ideology is Bad

Daniel Larison writes: (it is in a different context, but relevant nevertheless) ideology will not reliably predict consequences of events, but it will condition the mind to force every event into the mold provided by the ideology. If a person … Continue reading

Posted in project management | Leave a comment

What is the Value of a Programmer’s Time?

In my post on BizSpark, I suggested that while $1 in hard cash can be considered equivalent to $1 in programmer effort, practically they are quite different. There are a few different situations around this, so let me try to … Continue reading

Posted in project management | Leave a comment

Interview with Mike Ramm

My friend and project management writer, Mike Ramm, from Bulgaria, was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work and his ideas on project management. Could you please give an introduction to yourself and your online work for … Continue reading

Posted in project management | Leave a comment

Crisis Management is not Project Management

In the last few months, I had the misfortune of attending speeches where the talker took a fascinating subject about a real-life crisis and then went about brutally twisting the facts to fit into a project management paradigm. Without naming … Continue reading

Posted in project management | Leave a comment

What does “Non-Commercial” in Creative Commons Mean?

The Creative Commons license has different attributes, one of which is “Non-Commercial”. It simply states “You may not use this work for commercial purposes.” The literal reading makes it very clear you cannot profit directly from the work, such as … Continue reading

Posted in technology | Leave a comment

BizSpark is Not Good Enough to Depose LAMP

Microsoft has a program for startups called “BizSpark” that offers Microsoft development and production licenses with the following terms: (via StackOverflow blog) No fees to join Access to as many production Microsoft product licenses as you need, for free, for … Continue reading

Posted in software development | 1 Comment

Interview with Jurgen Appelo on the Complex Manifesto

I was fascinated with Jurgen Appelo’s post proposing a new “Complex Manifesto” because it was able to explain with clarity why we have to think deeper when we read software experts talk about various principles and practices. I requested him … Continue reading

Posted in software development | Leave a comment

Don’t be Too Quick to Judge

Sometimes, people can be too clever by half. When it comes to knowledge of understanding other people, everybody thinks they are an expert. They think they can understand the motivations of others based on one or two interactions when, in … Continue reading

Posted in business management | Leave a comment

Thoughts on Randy Pausch

I will be posting more on Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” in a different post, but before that, I wanted to talk about the context in which his lecture takes place. Taken by itself, the speech is very inspiring and … Continue reading

Posted in general issues | 3 Comments