Many developers try to get into (project)management. That is ok I guess. But what bothers me is, that many developers do that without actually wanting to be managers. It’s just that they want to make some progress and the only career option available is to get into management and manage larger and larger teams, or [...]
One of the most difficult tasks in a software development project is estimating the size of the project. Unfortunatly very often you have to do it at the very beginning of a project, when you have the least information. The result at the end is very often a large difference between the original estimate and [...]
I found a new (at least for me) metaphor: people are like water. The cool thing about this metaphor is: When you manage people you can use it to learn from the engineers building channels and dams. So here are the things you can learn:
If you want to stop a certain behavior, build a dam [...]
For those readers not from germany: Today there is an election in Germany and our politician used the time before to show off on how little they realize what is going on in the world. They will tell you how inspired they are by Barack Obamas fight for election last year. And then they will [...]
Do you know Maslows pyramid of Needs? No? Great, because it is all wrong anyway. At least the pyramid part is wrong. But chances are even if you don’t know Maslow and his pyramid you might be using it, and probably using the part that is wrong. So let’s start with the pyramid.
In 1954 the [...]
I love E-Mail. E-Mail doesn’t interrupt, it quietly sits there until you have time for it. E-Mail allows you to carefully think about what you want to say, and edit it if you change your mind. E-Mail is permanent, so you can look up what you were asked and what you replied and if necessary [...]
Once upon a time I was a little software developer underling. When I was done with something I walked to my boss and said “Hey boss, what shall I do?” and my boss said “Go write that program”. And I wrote that program until I was done, just to start over. But these simple times [...]
As everybody in the IT blogosphere knows by now Jeff Atwood started quite some discussion with his opinion that there might be too many rules out there for developers to follow. I think the opposite is true. I think the IT industry is still a mess because 90% of the members of this industry do [...]
Don’t let you fool by all the christmas greetings! There is work to be done, and to get it done faster it is always a good idea to demotivate people. So here are some tricks to get you going.
Don’t tell people what you want. Tell them how to do it. After all you hired experts [...]
Als Mitarbeiter eines Softwaredienstleisters habe ich mit agilen Methoden immer wieder ein großes Problem: “Wie überzeuge ich den Kunden?” Es sollte in seinem Interesse sein, mit den Softwareentwicklern, die Anwendung in kleinen Häppchen zu spezifizieren, zu entwickeln und auszuprobieren. Aber der Kunde sieht die Sache anders. Er hat oft schlechte Erfahrungen gemacht. Anbieter haben nicht [...]