process improvement
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How to Present Your Ideas So They Have the Best Chance of Being Sold Have you ever proposed an important change and those in charge stubbornly refused to back your ideas? Consider whether it was because your proposal was one-sided, misdirected, or poorly packaged. To persuade managers, stakeholders, or customers to support your ideas, keep these points in mind. |
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Remember: Your Goal Is to Solve Your Customers' Problems Steve Berczuk reminds us that while estimation, process, and technical skill are essential to delivering value to a customer in a cost-effective way, they are just means to your primary goal of solving problems. |
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What Does It Really Cost to Fix a Software Defect? Bonnie Bailey writes that confirmation bias leads us to throw out the critical thinking needed to determine if the “average cost to fix one defect” metric, which is what we really have to figure out to get the data points for the Boehm curve, is really even a valid metric in the first place. |
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For Agile Program Iterations, Short Is Beautiful For programs, the risks are too high to have longer times between integration points and demos. Waiting too long increases potential delays, which increases risks. You want feature teams in your program working together, so you want short iterations and small stories connecting often and everywhere. |
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Faster Isn't Always Better: The Value of Slowing Down at Work There’s an idea called the Slow Movement that is designed to counteract the notion that faster is always better. It's not about being lazy or not getting anything done. Rather, it’s about seeking the right speed to do things, and doing them as well as possible instead of as fast as possible. |
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Coach New Project Team Members to Succeed Managers need to conduct one-on-ones, and it's especially important with new people. Managers might not need to perform the on-the-job coaching, but they need to make sure the coaching gets done by someone. Otherwise, new hires are not going to perform at the levels they should—or could. |
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Four Steps to Managing Programs with Agile and Traditional Projects You are a program manager with some agile projects and some traditional projects in the midst of an agile transition. How do you manage the program? You have to help the traditional project managers work in some new and different ways. Here are four steps to help the adjustment go more smoothly. |
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Making Telecommuting Work for Your Product Development Team Can you make telecommuting work for your organization? Of course you can. The question is this: Will it make your product development proceed faster, with more ease and less cost, and allow you the most flexibility? If not, you may want to reconsider having employees telecommute. |
