management
Avoid Predictable Staffing Mistakes in an Economic Recovery An economic downturn puts pressure on management to control costs, and sometimes, not much can be done about that. But it's important not to carry these penny-pinching habits into a recovery. There are observable patterns to labor costs that can help predict problems likely to happen in 2015. |
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The Weakest Link in Your Chain There is a saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. DevOps helps establish a pipeline to automate application and systems software deployments. DevOps also has an amazing way of very quickly discovering exactly which link in the deployment chain needs to be fixed or replaced. |
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Why It May Seem Like People Aren’t Listening to You When you introduce a new policy or give instructions and people do something completely different instead, it can seem like they are deliberately ignoring you. But it might actually be something you are doing (or not doing). Consider three ways in which you could be contributing to the situation. |
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Averting Rude Behavior—Even if It’s Unintentional How often do we glance a certain way, use a certain phrase, or make an innocuous comment and unintentionally offend a customer or coworker? Worse, how often do we do so and not even realize it? You don't have to worry whether every syllable or nod might cause offense. Just be conscientious. |
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Long-Term Trends: Project Schedule and Productivity on the Decline QSM recently completed an analysis of how project schedule has changed over time and the subsequent impact on effort and productivity. The results indicate that project size, effort, and productivity have all decreased over time. This story explores the findings and shares some related observations. |
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Aligning IT with the Business: The Age-Old Debate The topic of IT–business alignment is a subject that has been discussed, debated, theorized, and proceduralized for decades. Why is it still a topic at all? Well, mainly because of differing beliefs about IT’s job function. How do you define the relationship between IT and the overall organization? |
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How to Give Instructions So That People Will Follow Them If you have asked for one thing and gotten another, maybe the problem is the way you gave the instructions. This is the “ curse of knowledge"; once you know something, it's difficult to imagine how it appears to someone who doesn't know. Read on to learn how to better communicate instructions. |
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Ken Whitaker Presents Leading Software Teams Today at ADC/BSC East Ken Whitaker of Leading Software Maniacs gave the first keynote presentation at Agile Development Conference & Better Software Conference East 2014. It was titled “From Chaos to Order: Leading Software Teams Today” and covered his five tenets of leadership to restore order to product management. |