Recent Articles
Article by Naomi Karten |
Jul 20 2012 - 5:59pm Software professionals are multitaskers. Some are better at multitasking than others, but everyone does it because, after all, what choice do you have if you want to get everything done? Read More
Article by Naomi Karten |
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Jul 18 2012 - 3:19pm Software projects fail. Not all of them, fortunately, but the statistics are hardly reassuring. According to one recent study, for example, 70 percent of organizations surveyed had suffered at least one project failure in the prior twelve months! In another, only 40 percent of projects met schedule, budget and quality goals. And the annual cost of these failures is in the trillions! Read More
Article by Brad Egeland |
Jul 17 2012 - 8:00am When a project isn't going well, it's important to stay on track and keep the current and future project tasks in perspective. How do you keep your team focused on the project at hand and your client confident and calm? Read More
Article |
Jul 15 2012 - 11:41pm Alan Page has done his share of hands-on testing and team management in his years at Microsoft (he's also the co-author of How We Test Software at Microsoft). And, in that time, he has learned that what you know isn't nearly as important as what you can figure out. In this interview with TechWell editor Joey McAllister, Alan discusses the importance of honing your critical-thinking skills and offers some tips for doing so. Read More
Article by Naomi Karten |
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Jul 11 2012 - 3:00pm These days, hardly anyone seems to take the time (or make the time) to listen to others. Nevertheless, in working with team members and customers, genuine listening—not just going through the motions—is critical to success. Read More
Article by Johanna Rothman |
Jul 10 2012 - 10:18am Not every employee is salvageable, and it’s almost always a case of cultural fit. If you’ve provided honest and open feedback and the employee can’t or won’t change, it’s up to the manager, or the self-managing team, to help the employee move on. Read More
Article by Graham Oakes |
Jul 3 2012 - 8:15am Governance doesn't have to end in bureaucracy. Learn to maintain and refine your governance structures, and you'll reap the rewards of improved decision-making processes. Read More
Article by Naomi Karten |
Jul 2 2012 - 12:00pm Why, oh why, is it so difficult to create a smoothly functioning, high-performing software team? Probably because the people on the team are human beings, with widely varying experiences, background, and preferences, and lots (lots!) of opinions about the best way to carry out a project. Read More
Article by Naomi Karten |
Jun 28 2012 - 11:30am When a deadline is looming, you do whatever’s needed to get the job done. Often that entails working from one end of the day to the other in hopes that the longer you work, the more you’ll get done. It may be, though, that the nonstop approach is not the best route to productivity. Read More
Article by Mike Cohn |
Jun 19 2012 - 9:00am Rather than rely on large handoffs between specialties, high-performing Scrum teams learn to do a little bit of everything all the time during a sprint. To do this effectively, teams must make three changes: shift from writing about requirements to talking about them, reduce the size of handoffs and make them more frequently, and pay more attention to the size of the product backlog items that they bring into their sprints. Read More
