Articles

Project Negotiations and the Iron Triangle

Negotiation skills are useful in life and essential for professional success. This week, Payson Hall provides a short tutorial on project negotiations that includes a technique to help you look for solutions. The use of motivation and the "Iron Triangle" is a good starting point.

Payson Hall's picture Payson Hall
An Uncomfortable Truth about Agile Testing

One characteristic of agile development is continuous involvement from testers throughout the process. Testers have a hard and busy job. Jeff has finally starting to understand why testing in agile development is fundamentally different.

Jeff Patton's picture Jeff Patton
Modern Distributed Teams

Traditionally, managing distributed teams has been perceived as difficult. But the advent of effective modern processes and tools is breaking through the obstacles and making distributed teams a viable—and valuable—option. Find out how to make the most of people, processes, and tools to create and maintain a successful distributed team.

Chris McMahon's picture Chris McMahon
Software Development Worst Practices

While some debate which, if any, industry practices deserve the designation "best practices," this tongue-in-cheek look at the horrors of some of software's "worst practices" drives home the value of the good ones and may help us improve the quality of our software.

Gregory pope12's picture Gregory pope12
A Needle in a (Very Large) Haystack

Putting together a successful team is always a challenge, but assembling a global team can be almost overwhelming. These tips can help you overcome the obstacles to hiring the best offsite developers for your project.

Sherif Koussa
Customer Advocacy: The Key to Testing Success

Testing professionals are often viewed as the pessimists of the software world. Some people think testers will do anything to prevent an application’s release into production. In reality, testers should be pro-active protectors of the organization and a strong voice for its customers-lines of business, end-users of the applications, system designers, developers, and the operations group responsible for application support. Theresa Lanowitz believes that testers should be customer advocates, representing all constituents in each and every stage of the application development lifecycle. As such, testers help ensure delivery of quality products that meet the needs of all. To be a successful customer advocate, you must understand and balance the complex web of requirements, constraints, roles, skills, and abilities of all stakeholders.

Theresa Lanowitz, voke, Inc.
Setting Up Global Agile Teams

There are no best practices for creating a productive, global development organization, just a few good ideas to think about and tailor around your particular objectives. Consider three universal issues every organization must grapple with to make a global agile team successful: data considerations, communications needs, and a company's agile readiness. How you handle each of these issues will vary widely, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for every organization.

David Webb
Collaboration: It's More than Facilitated Meetings

Esther Derby has noticed something lately, namely that when people write about collaboration, they discuss facilitated meetings. Well-run meetings that encourage participation and building consensus are certainly valuable, but there's more to collaboration than just well-run meetings. Esther explains that true collaboration assumes shared responsibility and shared ownership and boosts creativity and learning.

Esther Derby's picture Esther Derby
Pine Needles and Better Communication

As a new Army Ranger, Payson acquired many hard-earned lessons. But dodging snakes and alligators while navigating a Georgia swamp one moonless night, he learned two lessons in particular that can help project managers navigate their software projects.

Payson Hall's picture Payson Hall
Taking It Personally

Ah, the annual review. It's time to find out what your boss has planned for your career over the next twelve months. But wait, it's your career. Don't wait for your employer to direct your growth and development—take responsibility your future.

Alicia Yanik

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