A few years back I was pulled into a huge and troubled documentation project. Since the project involved massive documentation effort and some Liasioning with government agencies and external consultants, no one was keen on taking up the work. Initially I was scared and confused on my abilities to work on such a huge documentation […]
For members of test team, it is very important to raise the alarm bells at right instances. With right instances, I mean that test team should raise the alarm bells well in advance even if they have slightest of apprehension about the product quality and resolution of bugs therein. Raising alarm bells is a very […]
In an overly software dependent world, software quality has been more critical than ever before. Just came across an article in Baseline Magazine listing the "Eight Fatal Software-Related Accidents". Of them, the most devastating has been a software bug which hobbled a radar causing a Korean Jet crash killing 225 people in 1997. On similar […]
Many think management is an easy job. Managers are perceived as people who just delegate, sit back and then monitor. The "real work" is usually done by the team members. Is that really so? To know what it takes to be a manager, here is a very interesting post by Skip "Management's got it easy!" Skip […]
Motivated team members can create wonders for the project. How can a manager, within his reach, keep his team members motivated? Project Management Digest has an excellent post on "The basic way to motivate". It says, that project managers should focus on three basic goals for providing motivation. The Three Key Goals: Equity: – employees […]
One of the most important traits that a project manager need is effective communication skills. Project managers do a lot of communication with the stakeholders, end users, project team members, senior management, peers, HR people and quality personnel. Sometimes, projects that overcome most of the other technical and engineering challenges run into trouble just because […]
One of the most important traits of a good manager is the ability to criticize constructively. Criticism keeps us all on edge and helps us to perform better. I had a manager who never allowed me to be content with what I did. Even when I thought I did a great job he would always […]
“What is a test harness?” – one of the team members asked me the other day. While there are many definitions of what a test harness means, one of the easy-to-understand definitions at wikipedia.org goes like this “In software testing, a test harness is a collection of software tools and test data configured to test a […]
It is said, "A manager is as strong as his team is." I believe that periodic one on one interactions with team is a great way – to maintain a rapport with the team members – to manage expectations (to and from team members) – to keep them updated about the developments – to share […]