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Absentee Leadership: The Worst Kind of Manager Absentee leaders are managers who are physically present but psychologically absent. They are incompetent and disengaged, to the extent that they don't support their teams adequately. If you have an absentee manager (and don’t have the luxury of seeking another position), here's how you can try to handle the situation. |
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Good Process, Bad Process “Process” is a word that seems to have a lot of baggage. Depending on whom you ask, process is either essential to delivering value, or something that gets in the way. But this is the wrong way to frame the issue. A process is not inherently good or bad; it's how you use it, and whether it's right for your situation. |
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To Be a Better Tester, Ask the Right Questions Critical thinking is a core trait a software tester needs to succeed, and asking questions is a great skill to help. Questioning brings out the required information, breaks assumptions, and enables everyone on the team to give their perspectives. But there's an art to asking the right question at the right time. |
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Scrum Roles, Goals, and You The Scrum Guide specifies that there are three roles: product owner, developer, and ScrumMaster. It’s essential that a Scrum team have each of these roles to help it work well. But depending on how you implement the roles, you may end up hurting rather than helping your Scrum process. Focus on goals, not job titles. |
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The Problem with the People-Management Bell Curve Conforming team performance evaluations to a tidy bell curve is a simple, quantitative solution to the challenging problem of rating employee performance. However, it doesn’t work. It’s unrealistic (not to mention counterproductive) to force-fit employee evaluations to the curve when that doesn't reflect their work. |
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Does Agile Have Too Many Meetings? Because agile favors lots of short meetings, it may seem like they take up a lot more time. But when you compare it to time spent meeting in the pre-agile days, it's usually actually less. However, this doesn’t mean all meetings you attend are useful. Here are a few tips for deciding if all your meetings are necessary. |
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For Professional Communication, Check Your Grammar and Punctuation If you want to be taken seriously at work, you should pay careful attention to your grammar and punctuation in proposals, formal emails, instructions, presentations, blog posts, resumes—pretty much any important written communication. If you frequently make style and usage mistakes, your credibility can take a hit. |
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One-on-Ones: A Framework for Feedback Regular one-on-one meetings between a manager and employee are a forum to provide safe, timely feedback. They can be short or longer, but you should discuss successes, challenges, and how to improve. Having a framework for the conversation helps you make sure that the meetings don’t routinely become chat sessions. |
