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 … [Read more...]
But Is It Possible?
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 the Law and Order television … [Read more...]
Office Hoteling
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 … [Read more...]
Critical Lesson in Estimation
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 … [Read more...]
Trade-off: Go For Speed
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 … [Read more...]