I recently played the ballpoint game for the first time and was impressed… … how clearly it demonstrates the different phases of a team going through the ‘storming, norming and performing’-phases for everyone – even for management spectators. … how the iteration-rhythm helps to keep focus and increase the team performance to a very high and predictable level. … how easy it [...]
Archive for the ‘Softskills’ Category
October 29, 2009 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Softskills, Software development
Social Tagging: agile • development • team
Filed under: Softskills, Software development
Social Tagging: agile • development • team
June 27, 2009 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Books, Softskills
Social Tagging: culture • people • team
Filed under: Books, Softskills
Social Tagging: culture • people • team
I have just finished the book ‘Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager’ by Michael Lopp and I would like to recap the idea behind the 2 identified types of ploblem solvers on a development team. These are their characteristics: Incrementalist: They are driven by constantly making small forward increments. They [...]
April 29, 2009 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Podcasts, Softskills
Social Tagging: people • Podcasts • team
Filed under: Podcasts, Softskills
Social Tagging: people • Podcasts • team
I am a fan of good receipes and checklists and just discovered the podcast “The Managing Software Development (MSD) Show” by James Edgell, which I highly recommend for all folks being responsible for IT-people and in the end for what they produce. The value of your software development resources (people) consists of two things: their [...]
Sometimes you come accross something and pause thinking ‘I have experienced exactly that’. So it happend when I read Scott Ambler’s post ‘Bureaucracy Isn’t Discipline’. Here are the main points and in my view ammunition for philosophical discussions: Successful agile practices demand great discipline and require significant skill and experience to actually get stuff done. [...]
November 9, 2008 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Inspiration, Podcasts, Softskills
Social Tagging: culture • innovation • Podcasts
Filed under: Inspiration, Podcasts, Softskills
Social Tagging: culture • innovation • Podcasts
Here are the thoughts taken from a lecture of Judy Estrin (CEO of JLABS, LLC) on innovation recorded in October 2008 at Stanford University: Core Values of Innovation: Curiosity and ability to frame open questions. Instead of ‘Do you need this feature?’ you could ask ‘What are you currently working on?’ or ‘What are your [...]
The five stages of innovation: 1. People deny that the innovation is required. 2. People deny that the innovation is effective. 3. People deny that the innovation is important. 4. People deny that the innovation will justify the effort required to adopt it. 5. People accept and adopt the innovation, enjoy its benefits, attribute it [...]
Inspired by a talk of Joseph Pelrine http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Agile-Adoption-Joseph-Pelrine about why agile methods sometimes fail in organizations, I became aware of the following point: The cycle to successful progress in agile teams is NOT Inspect > Adapt but rather Apply > Inspect > Apadpt. Agile teams operate in complex environments (systems). Often there are no direct [...]
Inspired by the post by Jeremy Meyer “Why it’s better to be lazy” I discovered an interesting conceptual view on how military staff was classified by General von Moltke’s Value Matrix: “There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…Second, there are the [...]
Inspired by an article at InfoQ (http://www.infoq.com/articles/better-best-practices) I discovered an interesting model, which explores the nature of learning in an interesting way: The Dreyfus Model for Skills Acquisition. In essence it describes how people acquire skills over time, what supports them best in their progress and how they behave with their growing knowledge. Five levels [...]
This is a nice collection of podcasts and videos of today’s entrepreneurial leaders talking about various success factors: http://edcorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html Podcast-RSS: http://www.stanford.edu/group/edcorner/uploads/podcast/EducatorsCorner.xml
Guy Kawasaki on important stages towards successful innovation. http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1867.html
Killer Innovations is a source of tools, tricks and lessons about creativity and innovation. The goal of the podcast is to show the listeners that being creative and innovative is a skill that can be learned. Goto: http://techtrend.com/blog/ Current show: Finding and Keeping Innovation Champions
Great essay about hackers and the way they work and like to work: Audio: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html Transcript: http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html Other essays of Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
An interesting blog-post on “Software Development Team Diversity“
Big collection of articles worth reading about management of software projects found on “AYE (Amplifying Your Effectiveness) Conference – Articles about software and IT Development”: Goto: http://www.ayeconference.com/articles.html
June 28, 2007 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Books, Resources, Softskills, Software development, Tutorials
Filed under: Books, Resources, Softskills, Software development, Tutorials
I have often wondered why it is so difficult for non-developers (management, sales people, customers, inexperienced developers etc.) to understand the mechanics of software development, its life-cycle and the related elements like for example the importance of code-base quality, refactoring, versioning, unit testing, agile development practices, requirements management, project-wide standards, creating a productive, open and [...]
Post about how to hire good programmers. Goto: http://www.artima.com/wbc/interprog.html
Goto: http://www.manager-tools.com
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