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Wednesday, May 07, 2008 8:47 AM

Keep Your Eyes on the True Goal

We recently went through mid-year reviews and I found myself repeating similar advice several times. Here it is: Be very clear about what your goal is and continuously reassess whether you are on track to get there. To make this more concrete, consider
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Monday, March 10, 2008 10:09 AM

Suggestions for Smoother Meetings

A few weeks ago I attended a training and had an opportunity to try out the ideas generated from my earlier training. As part of this most recent training we had an exercise where we were divided into two groups. One group represented the technical team
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Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:03 AM

Evaluating Your Skill As A Leader

Someone recently characterized for me one way leaders are evaluated. This certainly isn't the only way and it doesn't catch everything, but it is a good place to start. The list is succinct and the questions thought-provoking. Here is the list: Results
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Friday, November 16, 2007 8:05 AM

Phone Screen Questions

Steve Yegge from Amazon offers his Five Essential Phone Screen Questions . It's an old post, but a good one. His advice is solid. It's always disappointing to bring in a promising candidate for an interview only to have them bomb. It would be much better
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 11:28 AM

"Everyone" Is Not A Valid Owner

Saw this over on {Codesqueeze}. He talks about the danger of self-organizing teams. When people aren't given clear responsibilities, things get dropped. If there is a task which belongs to everyone it will in the end be accomplished by no one. Everyone
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Friday, November 09, 2007 9:17 AM

Keep Process Simple

Year ago one of our Software Test Engineers was tasked with documenting our smoke* process. It should have been something simple like: Developer packages binaries for testing Developer places smoke request on web page Tester signs up for smoke on web
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
Friday, October 12, 2007 7:53 AM

Interviewing the Experienced

This week there was an interesting conversation over on Slashdot. The subject of the post is an age discrimination suit against Google. However, the discussion has gone to other interesting places. The question is being asked if there is a difference
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Monday, September 17, 2007 9:33 AM

Apportion Blame Correctly

This is a follow-on to my post about Managing Mistakes . There is a particular kind of blame I've seen several times and which I feel is especially unwise. The situation is this. A person, we'll call him Fred, is working with another team to get them
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Thursday, September 13, 2007 8:35 AM

Managing Mistakes

A promising young executive at IBM was involved in a risky venture that lost $10 million for the company. When Tom Watson Sr., the founder and CEO of IBM, called the executive to his office, the executive tendered his resignation. Watson is reported to
Posted by SteveRowe | 4 Comments
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Thursday, August 23, 2007 8:55 AM

Creating Change

A few articles that came across my browser recently. Both deal with the idea of changing an organization. We all get the feeling now and then that our organization is suboptimal in some way or other. Sometimes it's just a few things. Other times it might
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Monday, August 13, 2007 9:15 AM

Scrum Meetings for Test

A year and a half ago I talked about how I was running scrum meetings with my team. Since then, we've refined the process but have consistently held scrums on a regular basis. Note that I'm not running a full Scrum system with sprints and product backlogs
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 10:06 AM

Clarity: The Most Important Management Deliverable?

During my week-long management training class, I observed something worth sharing. One of the most important things a manager needs to provide to his (or her) team is clarity. It is important that you give precise instructions. If asked for details, it
Posted by SteveRowe | 5 Comments
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Monday, July 23, 2007 8:30 AM

Too Many Questions

Or: Guidelines for dealing with a newbie. If you are an experienced programmer or a manager, the chances are that you've had to deal with a new hire (or intern) who asks lots of questions. No matter who you are, you likely were that annoying newbie at
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Thursday, July 19, 2007 8:00 AM

Hofstadter's Law

Good advice for all project managers. Hofstadter's Law : It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Posted by SteveRowe | 0 Comments
Wednesday, July 04, 2007 2:11 PM

The Three Stonecutters

Lots of interesting quotes in Dreaming in Code. This one is the story of three stonecutters. Each is asked what he is doing. The first answers that he is, "making a living wage." The second says, "I am doing the best job of cutting stones in the entire
Posted by SteveRowe | 4 Comments
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