Is chaos like a wild horse?

Inhumane horse trainers (managers) see a rebellious animal who must adjust to a new environment. They transform the horse through a process they call "breaking." They break the will of the horse so it submits to the will of the human. Their methods may include:

• Saddling and riding the horse until its will is broken
• Tying the saddled horse to a tree until it ceases to struggle
• Drowning the horse until it submits
  

Rewards can be powerful management tools, but only if you implement them effectively. Discover how the right timing and getting to know your employees better can improve the impact of your recognition methods. 

Todd Wilkens advocates banning crackberries from all meetings. I agree with Todd that people distracted by emails and phone calls aren't focused and become impediments to an effective meeting. But, in my experience, too many organizations have terribly ineffective meetings. If your organization's meetings are terrible, will a ban on crackberries make them effective?

Does management reject your ideas? A typical cause for rejection is a failure to frame the idea effectively. Frame your idea effectively and it becomes a proposal, which will demand consideration by management. What is the recipe and key ingredients for an effective proposal?

My article Drawing Out the Facts: The Art of the Discovery Interview was published in the July, 2007 issue of Better Software Magazine. The article explores how to conduct effective client interviews.

"We know better than they do about what's needed." Whenever you hear an influential member of your team utter those words, fasten your safety belt. The team is nearing the Twilight Zone.

I have had the good fortune to be a member of many successful teams during my career: But my career hasn't been all bliss -- I have also been a member of unsuccessful teams. In my experience, the recipe for the most successful and satisfying team experiences contained ingredients that were ignored by the unsuccessful teams. What ingredients fostered both teamwork and success?

I argued in my first article about stand-up meetings that the right participants were the key to a successful meeting rather than whether the participants were standing up or sitting down. Despite my dislike for forcing people to stand up, I mentioned in that article my positive regard for other elements of the standard stand-up meeting.

Albert, without fail, has exceeded all of his production objectives for the past five years. He is a top performer who produces high-quality results. Colleagues like him. Clients adore him. But Albert never works more than 20 hours per week. That's less than one-half the amount of time his colleague's work.

Albert receives a compensation package equal or better than his colleagues. He has a single requirement for his manager and his organization, "Don't waste my time." You now control the organization. Would you continue to employ Albert under the same arrangement?

Your manager, Ellsworth, asks you, "But is it possible?" He wants you to tell him that it is possible for you to satisfy a project milestone despite the argument you presented him for the past five minutes that the milestone was unrealistic.

Do you need to amplify your personal effectiveness? your team's effectiveness? your organization's effectiveness? 

What is office hoteling? Why is the practice spreading? What are the unintended consequences of its usage?

What is a measurement? 

The term brownfield site means real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.

Does the term brownfield software system have merit?

When you interview for your next job, I recommend analyzing how people treated you during the hiring process.

Why?

What critical lesson have I learned about the process of making an estimate? 

A participant in a workshop that I led drew the above picture to describe the role he played in his company's process:

Do drawings help members of a team to better reveal their point of view?

What do effective project managers realize?

People have passionately argued about whether people are more important than process or process is more important than people. Tune in; for instance, a colleague writes passionately about the triumph of people over process. Another colleague writes passionately about the importance of heroes. A pundit writes passionately about how great systems (process) are more important than great people. And yet another colleague writes passionately about a method that helps competent people perform better.

I can reveal a lot about my biases by answering the following question: How do I feel about the thought of being employed by a company with a great process?

The people whose opinion counts the most choose to go for faster delivery speed. Their thinking may be sound; in this case, they want to beat their competitors to market.

Choosing faster product delivery visibly sacrifices product quality and, in my experience, it often invisibly sacrifices the economy of product support. In this post, I answer the following questions:

• What is a tradeoff?
• What distinguishes a conscious from an unconscious tradeoff?
• What is the impact of trading off quality for speed?
• What can you do to change the choice?