People need to know what is expected out of them. Expectations from them are usually communicated verbally in one to one meetings or team meetings. However, as soon as they are back their day to day activities these expectations loose visibility. It helps to document performance expectations or Key Result Areas (KRA). My first introduction to […]
Projects often comprise of team members and managers who work differently. Diversity in work patterns of team sometimes brings out best and often the worst. For a car to move smoothly all four wheels have to rotate at the same speed. Same might not be fully applicable to software projects, but project teams have to […]
"Adapting Your Requirements Practices" by Ellen Gottesdiener is the current article on Stickyminds.com. Requirements management is core to software development activity and requirements management approach differs from project to project. Ellen says, "Some amount of requirements growth and change is normal. The practice of "playing around" with a product is an excellent way to explore […]
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 […]