Suppose you have a number of products, or a number of applications, that share some common functional needs. It seems obviously reasonable to create a separate team to build those functions in common. Often these grow to become known as a framework, and the product or application teams are expected to use it.
It’s a seductive concept, but don’t do it. Why not? I can think of several reasons. Read More
Adding a new team member to an existing team always introduces challenges. The introduction changes the makeup of the team, and if the team had jelled, it has to do so, again, with the new member.
Also, the new member has to learn about the team and its work. There are many tacit assumptions held within a team. It’s impossible to document them all and, even if you could, both reading such a document and keeping it up to date are daunting herculean tasks.
So how do you maximize the integration of a new team member with a minimum amount of work? Read More
A common question heard in companies that produce software, either for in-house use or for sale, is “When will this software be done?” I’ve observed this question being asked when it was not yet decided what the software was to include, nor who was to build it. It’s clear that we have little on which to base an estimate, given this state of affairs. Nevertheless, in many organizations, people will start to anticipate what it will include and who will be available to build it in order to give an answer to this question.
Not everyone is so compliant, though. Some people will say that not only can you not estimate the construction with so little information, but you don’t need to estimate it. They’ll say it’s enough if you can build it in little increments of functionality, and stop when it does enough. Read More
My article, “Project Communication: Caught in the Middle” has been published on projectmanagement.com now. It talks about the communication issues for a project manager in charge of an Agile project, and ways to manage both downwards and upwards.
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