The curse of middle management
In a not so distant past, I was a project manager. I scoped projects, cleared the way for my team and solved problems when they arose. And boy, did they…
Measuring is for students
Managers seem to be obsessed with measuring stuff. Man-days, story points, KPI's... It's their way of quantifying a chaotic process in the hope of controlling it. It's an understandable but…
Guardians of the Gantt Chart
The Project Manager in an Agile environment With the shift to self-organized teams and Agile Software Development, we've seen the traditional manager role erode. The boss has been replaced by…
There is no WHY in TEAM.
Nothing defines the success of a product more than the team that builds it. Without the right people and skills, nothing gets done. Well, nothing good at least... From Jeff…
Career refactoring
Technology moves fast and standing still for a few years will hurt your career. Developers know this. Hiring managers know this. Whenever I interview senior devs, there are always a…
Agile is done. What’s next?
Last week I tweeted a rather snarky joke about the current state of Agile software development and the results were overwhelming. There were a few snide reactions from Scrum Managers…
Technical investing
Technical debt is the name we give to those shortcuts we take when building software. It’s a clever analogy taken from the financial world. If your project is technically in…
Let’s communicate less
Management consultants and team building gurus all stress the importance of communication. A team is not just a group of individuals, but a network that works towards a common goal.…
Developer shortage reaches peak!
Our industry is in danger! We cannot seem to find the right people to fill all our tech vacancies. There has never been a worse time for hiring the right…
Deadlines are killing your company
If there is one thing large companies love it's deadlines. We'll set Big Hairy Goals somewhere in the not-so-near future and we'll take them seriously. Promised! Setting a hard deadline…