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The Optimists Don't Make It Out

Optimism is normally viewed as a positive trait, but not when it comes to goals and estimates. Project managers who don their rose-colored glasses when faced with the harsh light of reality are setting themselves up for disappointment.

Lee Copeland's picture Lee Copeland
Which Obstacle Should You Tackle Today?

As a lead and manager, your job to remove obstacles that impede work is most important. But of all the obstacles you find, whether they be people's perceptions, bottlenecks in the work flow, or an ill-fitted chair or desk, which do you tackle first? Johanna Rothman explains how to remove the obstacles that slow, impede, or halt project work.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Product Owners Should Care About Quality

Product owners often view quality as an ugly duckling—necessary to ship software, but nerdy and a drag. Instead, they should be guardians of quality. Only when quality meets functionality is lasting value created.

Roman Pichler
Hearing ''No''

"No" can be disappointing. Sometimes we have difficulty hearing or dealing with No. Can we learn how to cope with No with less pain and angst? Can we learn how to prevent No at least some of the time? Yes and yes!

Rick Brenner's picture Rick Brenner
Copeland on Weinberg

Lee Copeland and Jerry Weinberg have crossed paths—both on page and in person—many times over the years. Here, Lee reflects on some of those meetings and their valuable lessons.
 

Lee Copeland's picture Lee Copeland
The Roles of the Project Management Office in Scrum

Successfully adopting Scrum entails understanding and perhaps adjusting the role of the project management office (PMO), whose workers are often resistant to the lighter-weight process. But, they can become a critical part of agile success. Discover how an agile PMO works.

Mike Cohn's picture Mike Cohn
License to Open Source

Open source is widespread and growing in many software development organizations. While there's no purchase cost, the code does come with license obligations. Understanding open source from an intellectual property perspective can help avoid downstream legal.

Kamal Hassin
Simplify Your Combinatorial Testing

Combinatorial testing is effective for testing multiple, non-sequential inputs that affect a common output in complex software. But, it's easy to misapply it or become a slave to the output. Learn to overcome limitations and benefit fully from this technique.

Bj Rollison's picture Bj Rollison
Us Against Them

How well does creating an opposing force serve to deliver on shared objectives within the same organization? A stronger argument may be to teach both business stakeholders and delivery personnel to reach across organizational boundaries to share not only the vision but also the methods used to achieve it.

Doug Goldberg's picture Doug Goldberg
Broken Windows, Broken Projects

A social experiment in the ‘80s found “Vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers are lowered by actions that seem to signal that 'no one cares.'" The same can be said for our software projects.

Lee Copeland's picture Lee Copeland

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