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What You Should Do When Someone Pushes Your Buttons Everybody gets angry once in a while. That, by itself, is no big deal. It's when you respond in a way that's out of proportion to the circumstances that anger becomes a problem—and in the workplace, there can be big consequences. The next time someone pushes your buttons, read this first. |
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“So, How’s It Going?” Thoughts on Reporting Project Progress People near the top of your org chart often want project status updates to be short and sweet. But oversimplified measures risk miscommunication. Be thoughtful when someone asks, “So, how’s it going?” If you summarize too much, you can lose context, and these managers may feel misled later. |
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How to Plan for Your Goals—and Then Reach Them Chances are good that by now, you've already given up on your New Year's resolution—or at least aren't quite where you want to be with it. How can you turn it around? Achieving your goals often depends on the way you map out how you plan on getting there in the first place. Read on for some advice. |
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The Abstraction Problem As technical people, when we give too much information in a project status meeting, we can overwhelm managers. Worse, if we don’t answer the implied question ("When is this thing going to be done?"), the managers will get answers elsewhere. Read on for ideas to get you speaking the same language. |
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Please, Take Your Sick Days The reality is that if you're sick, you'll be less productive than usual. Furthermore, the very act of dragging yourself in to work probably means it will take you longer to recover. Unless you absolutely have to be in the office, do yourself (and your coworkers) a favor and take some time off. |
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The Typical Project Over Time: A Long-Term Trends Report What does a typical software project look like, and how has what’s “typical” changed over time? QSM segmented more than 10,000 completed IT projects and looked at several software development metrics for each ten-year time period. |
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How Do Innovative Companies Run Their Meetings? How much do unproductive meetings cost? Approximately 11 million meetings happen in the US every day, and employees lose approximately four work days each month due to unproductive meetings. So what can some of the best run companies teach us about effectively running meetings? |
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What's in the Winter 2015 Issue of Better Software Magazine? Many of us spend more time (and money) beefing up our technical skills when we could use guidance on developing soft skills. The Winter 2015 issue of Better Software should have just what you need to overcome organizational roadblocks in your quest for agile nirvana. Read on to see what's in it. |