Planting Seeds

December 22, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Leadership, Quality 

When it’s time to act as a catalyst for change in an organization, the last approach you want to take is the old ‘bull in a china-shop’ method: taking charge, giving orders, ignoring feedback, making demands. While you may end up delivering the proposed changes and maybe even an accurate analysis of what really needs to be done, you will fail in the end. There will be massive overt push back and passive resistance, and you will likely sour the team’s attitude toward change in general. A better approach is to think of yourself as a farmer, and to plant seeds. Read more

Where Do Lessons Go?

December 13, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Project management, Quality 

A good part of a formal closing for any project is a discussion of lessons learned. An even better approach is to get the stakeholders together to gather these lessons, both good and bad, in the form of a comprehensive retrospective. Unfortunately, in most cases, these lessons learned would be more appropriately called “things we should learn but are doomed to identify as lessons again on our next project.” Read more

Misguided Consistency

December 6, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · 3 Comments
Filed under: Agility, Process 

In almost every process improvement initiative I have seen, whether based on some sort of guidance (such as CMMI, ISO, RUP, Scrum, or…pick your favourite) or not, there is significant emphasis on standardization of process. PMO implementations usually provide a process binder, maybe a bunch of templates to complete on each project. Often, the people that drive these implementations see the job as done once these ‘deliverables’ are delivered. All this consistency is completely misguided. Read more

Precision With a Wide, Moving Target

November 30, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Leadership, Quality 

One of the requests that I don’t think will ever go away in training and mentoring is the request for a recipe. Many people in this YouTube world of short attention spans aren’t interested in taking the time to understand topics in depth, they just want to know what will work, and simply apply it. Sorry, but I don’t think that makes for things more complex than chocolate brownies or IKEA furniture. Read more

Top of Mind

November 14, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Leadership, People, Process, Quality 

A few months ago, I posted some data that suggests that when we compare performance against different approaches to developing software, no particular brand stands out. Each approach appears to provide some net value in some area of performance, but there is no clear winner in the broad-based “this is the best way to develop our products” competition. There might be a couple of well known effects at play here. Read more

Best Foot Forward

November 7, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Leadership, Process, Quality 

There are many approaches that teams can take to improve. One thing that any team needs to understand before they should even try to get better is to understand why they would even bother to do so. There needs to be a clear and compelling reason for doing something different than they are currently doing, or any attempt to change is doomed to failure. Usually, that ‘why’ is sitting right under their noses, hiding in plain sight. Read more

Looking Forward

October 29, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · 1 Comment
Filed under: Agility, Leadership, Process, Quality, Teamwork 

As usual, heading down to Portland for the PNSQC conference this week provided me with a great deal of food for thought. This year, more than ever, I see signs that this industry might finally be maturing, getting over some of the bickering and posturing that seems to characterize the software sector more than anywhere else. Read more

Control and Management

October 20, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Leadership, Process, Project management, Quality 

The terms Control and Management are often used interchangeably for a variety of activities in product development: configuration, change, risk, process, and so on. From my perspective, there is a difference between the attitude (implied or expressed) with these words, and for a couple of reasons, I tend to lean towards management over control. Read more

Norms and Rules

October 13, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Leadership, Process, Project management, Quality 

I was chatting with someone the other day about my upcoming trip to Germany (I’m actually writing this one in the departure lounge). He was over there during the summer, and as a way of helping me ensure I had a good time, he noted “just remember, there are social norms over there, but there are no social rules”. Makes me ponder the relationship between the two. Read more

Pitching Value

September 29, 2009 by Jim Brosseau · Comment
Filed under: Project management, Quality 

For almost all of the projects that I have seen, the most difficult challenge for the project manager is to be able to clearly express what the expected value for the project will be for the sponsor. Without this, though, all that you are proposing is to spend some someone’s money in a given time period. Read more

Next Page »

  • Tag Cloud

  • What’s Happening

    Jan 28, 2010 - Thoroughly enjoyed an exploration of inter-cultural issues in the workplace with VanQ - 11 countries were represented, with fewer than 20 participants!
  • What People are Saying

    I was pleasantly surprised that you could derive this insightful feedback from a relatively short survey. — Randy Tkatch, VP Engineering, Spectrum Signal Processing