Project Management

Articles

work completed by elapsed time The Fine Art of Scheduling

Why is scheduling an art? If it were a science, every project would be delivered on time. Overruns have become so common that people have lost faith in schedules and view them as very malleable. In this article, Nick Jenkins explains how to prevent this in your project.

Nick Jenkins
Communicating Up

Have you ever read the latest memo from top management and wondered, "What are they thinking? This will never work!" Sometimes we have information that management doesn't have. How we put that information in front of management can determine whether they hear us or not. Esther Derby gives some advice on communicating up the chain.

Esther Derby's picture Esther Derby
Ten Ways to Guarantee Project Failure

Naomi Karten specializes in helping companies succeed in their projects. In this column, however, she gives tongue-in-cheek advice on how to make a project fail. Read on to see if these steps to failure are part of your organization's modus operandi.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Requirements Workshop Agenda (template)

This template for a requirements workshop includes preparation tasks and, a place for listing workshop tools and participants.

Ellen Gottesdiener's picture Ellen Gottesdiener
Assuming the Worst about Requirements

Requirements are under suspicion. Read between the lines of software and project management journalism and you'll hear nearly everyone lamenting the sad state of requirements. Managers plan only eight percent of project time for requirements. Developers worry about Zen-like requirements that lack sufficient detail to produce serviceable code. Testers think they have to backfill requirements. So, what were the analysts doing?

Becky Winant
Clarify Your Ranking for System Problem Reports

Here's a puzzle: If one defect has a severity rating of 3 and a priority rating of 2, and another defect has a severity rating of 2 and a priority rating of 3, which one do you fix first? In this column, Johanna Rothman tells why she thinks severity/priority combinations can be confusing, and she offers her own simpler, three-tiered rating system.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Pennywise

The go-go days of the '90s are gone, and with them extravagant hiring budgets. Most companies are being more conservative in making offers to candidates. If you're working on a tight hiring budget, how can you make the most of your hiring power? Esther Derby offers some advice on how to increase productivity after the candidate is in the door.

Esther Derby's picture Esther Derby
What Metrics Can Do for You

Measuring activities are vital to the software test process. On this site, there are more than 200 items (articles, tools, templates, etc.) classified under the topic "measurement." But what good are all the bits and pieces of data that you collect? In this week's column, veteran software tester Rick Craig outlines some of the practical uses for metrics.

Rick Craig's picture Rick Craig
Venus and Mars in the Workplace

In the "Venus and Mars" series of mainstream relationship books, author John Gray attests that differences in outlook and inherited traits account for relationship problems between genders. His position is that men and women come from inherently different places and therefore approach things from inherently different perspectives. In this week's column, Carol Dekkers explores how some of the issues in software development might be similarly rooted in differences between the software development and customer communities.

Carol Dekkers
Stop Destroying My Team with Bad MBOs

It's 2003, and you're a manager casting about for a good New Year's resolution. Sure, going to the gym, quitting cigarettes, cutting down on the cheeseburgers-those are all good resolutions for you personally. But how about a resolution that helps you professionally, and will help everyone who works for you? How about resolving to stop destroying your team with bad MBOs? Find out how, in this week's column by Rex Black.

Rex Black's picture Rex Black

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