Great Customer Service Doesn’t Scale Up

July 12, 2010
Thumbnail image for Great Customer Service Doesn’t Scale Up

I was tempted to title this post Why Apple Sucks, but I guess that wouldn’t be original at all. What more my point isn’t really about Apple itself but about specific behaviors which I recently experienced. OK, you’ve heard stories about Genius Bars and how they’re great idea not only in terms of customer satisfaction [...]

Read the full article →

Learning Project Management Basics

June 29, 2010
Thumbnail image for Learning Project Management Basics

A question about starting career in project management is heard pretty often. A question about value of different project management certifications usually follows. There is a bunch of standard answers for these questions. Apply for junior role in project management. Attend a course. Help your PM in her job. Get a certificate (this or another). [...]

Read the full article →

Agile Isn’t Immune for People Who Don’t Give a Damn

June 25, 2010
Thumbnail image for Agile Isn’t Immune for People Who Don’t Give a Damn

I like presenting. I just love the fact that every time I deliver the presentation I find something new in there. It’s like having tiny epiphanies while you’re talking to a crowd. And I’m sure I wouldn’t have them if I didn’t overcome my fears and didn’t start speaking publicly. A thing which hit me [...]

Read the full article →

Don’t Promote Best Engineers to Management Positions

June 23, 2010
Thumbnail image for Don’t Promote Best Engineers to Management Positions

I remember one of first post ideas for this blog back then, 4 years ago. It was about choosing people to promote them to management roles. I’ve never published the post and I’m glad about that. A few years ago I didn’t know about hiring and promoting managers more than typical decision maker in IT [...]

Read the full article →

Choose Your Battles

June 21, 2010
Thumbnail image for Choose Your Battles

Organizational changes are hard. The bigger the company is the stronger it defends its status quo. Humans wearing their employee hats aren’t so much different from those wearing their user hats – they like what they know, thus they don’t like changes. But there’s often someone who isn’t happy with current state. So you are [...]

Read the full article →

You Can Manage Your Boss

June 16, 2010
Thumbnail image for You Can Manage Your Boss

I often hear this excuse: “I don’t have power to change this.” Hell, I use it by myself way too often. It is a convenient excuse. Since you aren’t in position to do something the easy way you take a step back and do nothing. And this is wrong. Let’s take a typical situation: your [...]

Read the full article →

We Know Nothing about Our Teams

June 14, 2010
Thumbnail image for We Know Nothing about Our Teams

I am a chatty guy. Catch me while I’m not overworked and I will gladly jump into discussion. If you happen to be my colleague, it may be a discussion about our company. That’s perfectly fine for me. I believe in transparency so I won’t keep all information as they were top secret. This means [...]

Read the full article →

Best Practices: Continuous Build

June 11, 2010
Thumbnail image for Best Practices: Continuous Build

Under my recent post about best engineering practices I was pointed that it is just another “do whatever works for you” or “I don’t know experiment” kind of advice. Well, it was that kind of advice indeed. Have I ever given you a different one? Anyway I admit shot was on target. If someone is [...]

Read the full article →

Risk Management in Small Teams

June 9, 2010
Thumbnail image for Risk Management in Small Teams

I was taught risk management the classic way. You know, risk log, voting for probability and impact, finding out which risks are the most painful, deciding on mitigation plan, discussing results etc. A cool thing in this old-school process is that it activates different members of the team. Even those, who wouldn’t be asked otherwise. [...]

Read the full article →

When Kanban is the Best Choice

June 7, 2010
Thumbnail image for When Kanban is the Best Choice

Kanban, as any other methodology, isn’t a silver bullet. There are situations and teams when it shows its full potential but there are others where its impact will be limited. Where Kanban suits best then? Micro-sized teams It is said Scrum works best with teams of 7 or close to this size. Sometimes we deal [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →