Tag Archives: project management

Tracking Conversations

Steve Rowe has a management tip: When doing 1:1’s with your team (you are doing these regularly, right?), take notes to keep track of the conversations from week to week. I currently use a 5-tab notebook with one tab for … Continue reading

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Decision-Making Protocol

One of my acquaintances is fond of saying, “Employees view managers as monsters, at the worst, and idiots, at the best.” The point being that, even good managers have to overcome mistrust about their intentions and judgment before employees accept … Continue reading

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Are We Safer By Abolishing Rules?

Jurgen Appelo writes: In a Dutch article titled “Traffic is safer without rules” traffic expert Hans Monderman explained that the flow of traffic at an intersection can increase, while at the same time casualty rates decrease, when all traffic lights … Continue reading

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What Good Bosses Should Believe

Bob Sutton is hard at work on a new book and has put together a set of key beliefs that good bosses have. My thoughts on some of them: 1) I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it … Continue reading

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The Quality Imperative

Alan Skorks has an interesting post on different ways to look at software development: (emphasis in the original) the majority of companies that build any kind of software are ‘software as a destination’ companies. [...] On the other hand, most … Continue reading

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Avoiding Software Car Wrecks

I.M. Wright’s post on risk management is worth reading: Software engineers do this all the time. They come up with a development schedule, unexpected issues come up, and they end up being late. Instead of informing their managers of the … Continue reading

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Time, Budget, Scope

I understand what Glen Alleman is trying to do here when he insists that you can pick all three of time, budget and scope, but he totally misses the point: Put these estimates into a schedule, sequence the work. See … Continue reading

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Serialize Your Projects

Stephan Schmidt explains how doing several projects in parallel is counter-productive because of the high overhead costs involved. Projects must be tracked much longer, more documents are produced and must be tracked. All those status messages aggregate, flow upwards toward … Continue reading

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The Manager’s Manager

The most important person in your professional life is the person who your manager is beholden to. In a large organization, it is simple to identify this person: it is your manager’s manager. In a smaller company, it could be … Continue reading

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