I’m proud of all my teams – good people doing great things. But I’m particularly proud of my current team because it was the hardest to form, being split between London and Berlin. I formed this team by turning up. A simple message although quite painful for myself and my family. Actually that pain is part of the reason my approach works. Leaders turn up and the team appreciates that.
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Tag Archives: feel
Software Management Triumvirate: Delivery, Product and Technical
I view Delivery, Product and Technical as the three legs of software management stool. I have people responsible for these elements at both programme and project/team level.
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Contracts do not fix incompetence
“Contracts are the least powerful in getting people to do something. A contract does not fix incompetence.” Not my words, they come from Rajesh Mathur, but I completely agree.
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Shaping a team – Get good people and put them in the right role
“When will Stu stop playing with code?” The question was about Stu Fieldhouse, a Technical Project Manager working on my programme. My answer was “Never”. I had brought Stu in exactly because he plays with code. Or, more constructively, he fixes problems and lets us move on. Fast.
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Unfortunately Corporations Equate Weight of Paper with Safety
I believe in barely sufficient documentation but Corporations equate paper weight with safety.
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Need an unsolvable problem solved? Call in the Development Paratrooper
A guy walked up to me and said “I hear you’ve got a problem with Flash”. I hadn’t met him before but I’d heard about him. Mike Brown the Development Paratrooper.
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Are you leading or just going for a walk?
If you fancy yourself as a leader, have a glance behind you … is anybody following? Are you leading or just going for a walk?
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Look for Product Owners in the Business
You cannot lead what you don’t understand so I often recruit product owners from the business.
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Delivery Manager – A new role for an Agile world
Rich Lewis is the best I’ve worked with. When I met him he was a Business Analyst who, on the sly, was Scrum Master of a small team. He was good at this but capable of much more. I invited him to be the Delivery Manager on the programme I was running at the time.
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Product Owner – leader, facilitator or unnecessary overhead?
Daniel Markham thinks the Product Owner is “the perfect scam in the Agile community” and recommends getting rid of the role. This might work for highly functioning teams working in highly functioning organisations, but for not normal teams. For normal teams in normal organisations the Product Owner performs a valuable role as a facilitator and, if you are lucky, a leader.
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