Posts tagged as:

quality

Obie Fernandez’s Experience

by Steven M. Smith

Check out the blog post, What does Quality mean to you?, Obie Fernandez, CEO of Hashrocket, wrote after participating in a workshop I led for his organization.
The workshop was full of energy and fun. I hope to show portions of the video they shot of the event.
Working with Obie and Hashrocket was pure delight. Obie [...]

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Selling Your Ideas to Management

by Steven M. Smith

DAVID: Ruth, I think we should buy the ABC software to track trouble tickets and issues.
RUTH: There is no budget for that.
DAVID: But it takes me days to put together the information you want about the state of the product. And without an automated collection mechanism, I think many problems aren’t being reported.
RUTH: Provide the [...]

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Catch Them Doing It Right

by Steven M. Smith

First published in the Management Chronicles of Better Software Magazine, January – February, 2008 issue. It’s also posted on the stickyminds website.

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A smile formed on Eleanor’s face as she saw me approach her doorway.
She and I were meeting to discuss her views on recognizing and rewarding employees. She had been my manager for three [...]

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The Art of the Discovery Interview

by Steven M. Smith

“What?” raced through Janet’s head as she read the email. “Now that’s a surprise.”
The message was from Jack Johnson, vice president of development. It said she would receive a meeting request from Rajan Alak, an outside consultant, to interview her about the problems with the new system. The message went on to say the company [...]

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Trade-off: Go For Quality

by Steven M. Smith

What typically happens when product development decides to create a superior product? The most likely result is 1. slower delivery or 2. costlier development or 3. both slower delivery and costlier development. Why?

You don’t get something for nothing.
Producing a higher quality product takes more development time, which delays delivery to the customer and drives up [...]

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Full Time Pay for Half Time Work?

by Steven M. Smith

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 [...]

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But Is It Possible?

by Steven M. Smith

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.
You feel like you are on the witness stand. Jack McCoy, the character from [...]

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Office Hoteling

by Steven M. Smith

What is office hoteling? Why is the practice spreading? What are the unintended consequences of its usage?
Office hoteling changes the traditional model for how office space is used. Rather than assign permanent office space to each employee, hoteling is a system for assigning just-in-time temporary office space to employees. The hoteling systems I’ve experienced allowed [...]

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Critical Lesson in Estimation

by Steven M. Smith

What critical lesson have I learned about the process of making an estimate?
Have your most pragmatic, experienced people do the estimate.
Minimize the number of people who are members of the estimating team. A team size of three, in my experience, is ideal. That’s enough members to trigger divergent estimates, which creates arguments, which leads to [...]

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Trade-off: Go For Speed

by Steven M. Smith

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 [...]

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