Yes, we did have a new article last week!

Agile Portfolio Planning by Johanna Rothman.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Agile Adjustments

When new Agile teams run into problems, their fist impulse may be to resort to command-and-control solutions. In this week's article, Agile Adjustments, AYE guest presenter Elisabeth Hendrickson tells how she uses a teaching simulation to help Agile teams choose agile adjustments.

Motivating Employees

Managers ask me how to motivate the people who report to them. I think that's the wrong question. Stop do things that demotivate people, and create an environment for success. My article, Stop Demotivating Me! is on CIO.com.

For Your Reading Pleasure: So, Sue Me

What's there to learn from a slump in hardware sales, logic, and law suits? Jerry connects the dots in this week's article, So, Sue Me.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Going the Distance

Teams communicate quickly and freely when they work in the same room. There's no time wasted walking down the hall, going to another floor, or waiting for a return email or call back. Collocation is the most effective arrangement for teams, but that's not always possible. In Going The Distance, Esther Derby shares five tactics that help teams compensate for distance.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Communication Disconnects

Ever sat in a meeting watching two or more well-intentioned people talk right past each other? In Communication Disconnects, Don Gray explores the internal aspects of these disconnects, and provides some tips on how to diagnose and mitigate them.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Incorporating Part-time Team Members

In this week's article, Incorporating Part-time Team Members, Esther Derby looks at the real reasons part-time team members often fail to fit in. (Hint: it's not the team member.)

For Your Reading Pleasure: Becoming a Better Estimator

I suspect most of us have seen the statistics about how far off software estimates are. This week, Dave Smith explains how he uses simple tools to improve his estimates for software tasks: Becoming a Better Estimator.

Catching up with articles

I've been on the road recently, and out of my normal rhythm. So I didn't post a notice when our latest article went up. Planning for Technical Management Time, by Johanna Rothman, looks at the balance between management work and technical work and reveals the tipping point.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Waiting for People Who Arrive Late

Do your meetings start late? What does that say about your organization? In Waiting for People Who Arrive Late, Steve Smith shares his experience with trying to get meetings started on time.

(I'm posting this later in the week than I usually do...I'm on the road.)

For Your Reading Pleasure: Approaching Conflict in Style

Conflict is inevitable at work. Sooner or later, you will disagree on what needs to be done or how to do it. Your goals and priorities may clash with someone else's goal or priorities. How you--and the person you disagree with--approach the conflict affects both the outcome and how you feel about the exchange. In this week's article, Esther Derby explains some of the ways people approach conflict and how they affect solutions and relationships.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Schedule Chicken

What can happen when developers who are under schedule pressure are afraid to speak the truth to management? In Schedule Chicken, Johanna Rothman shows us one bad outcome, and how to avoid it.

Johanna will tell us much more about Schedule Chicken and other schedule games in her forthcoming book, Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. It's due out mid-June from the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

More reading pleasure

This week is a twofer.

Our latest article is AYE: There Be Magic, in which Dreamas Gentilharte Cheynelokk contemplates the many types of magical thinking at loose in the world.

For Your Reading Pleasure

We ran into a glitch getting this week's article posted...so in the meanwhile, for your reading pleasure, I'll share the article I was working on when I made my last post, A feedback story.

What Every Manager Should Know About Feedbackis on CIO.com.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Decide as a Team

This week, Steve Smith explains how to build consensus using a discussion and testing agreement in Decide as a Team.

For Your Reading Pleasure: The Big Picture: Four Different Ways of Participating

Jerry looks at four types of workshop participants and how he handles them as an instructor. Even if you don't teach or attend workshops, I'll bet you run across these four types. You may meet them in meetings, planning sessions, or other work settings... and Jerry's advice will help you there, too.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Overcoming Resistance

How do you get people to change? You don’t. You listen, understand their concerns, and find out what they value. Then you show them how to get where they want to go, and learn from them along the way. George Dinwiddie shares a change story in this week's article, Overcoming Resistance.

For Your Reading Pleasure: A Multi-use Model

Don Gray gives us this week's article, A Multi-use Model. Don uses a variety of models to help him understand computer and human system problems and shares his thinking about modifying models to make them more useful.

Enjoy!

For Your Reading Pleasure: Getting Ahead

Don't wait for your manager to initiate a discussion on career development--take charge of your own path. In this week's article Johanna Rothman describes four skills categories to think about if you are interested in Getting Ahead.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Quality Interactions

Some people think quality starts with good requirements and good design. As Esther explains in this week's article, qualitly actually starts with relationships, and Quality Interactions.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Test Trimming: A Fable about Testing

We've tried for years to convince people that cutting tests isn't the best way to save time on a project.

Jerry wonders if perhaps we've gone about it the wrong way, a presents a tested fable on trimming testing. Read it here, Test Trimming: A Fable about Testing.

For Your Reading Pleasure: An Appreciative Retrospective

(with yours truly).

For Your Reading Pleasure: Implementing by Feature

If your project schedule is bogged down, and you're having trouble discerning progress, it might be time to implement by feature. In this week's article, Implementing by Feature, Johanna Rothman tells a story about how one team got a handle on development by shifting their focus to features.

For Your Reading Pleasure: Do We Have to Choose Between Management and Leadership?

Every so often, someone declares "We don't need managers, we need leaders!" But what does that really mean? This week's article looks at what leaders and managers do and concludes it is not "either or." It's "both and."

For Your Reading Pleasure: Getting Some Good Out of Bad Interviewing

Suppose you are in a job interview and the hiring manager asks a question that seems truly bizarre? What if you ask a question and the answer seems strange? These moments may reveal more about the company and the hiring manager than anything else you learn in the interview.

Read about some of these unintentionally revealing interviews in this week's article, ...)

For Your Reading Pleasure: Tell Him?

This week's article, Tell Him? comes from AYE Host Steve Smith.

Steve invites us to take a look at who, when, and how a message is delivered affects how we receive the message.

For Your Reading Pleasure: The Risk of Embellishment

We've posted a new article to the Article Archive: The Risk of Embellishment by Naomi Karten.

Naomi is author of several books and a popular newsletter. Some of you may know her from her days as a PSL instuctor, or from her guest appearances at AYE.

She's a very serious person.



(photo (c) 2003 by Fiona Charles)

AYE Articles Volume 8

Every year, we post articles by the AYE hosts, guest presenters, and participants for your reading pleasure.

This year, we're starting with a rumination on surprising connections and systems thinking from Dwayne Phillips.

Dwayne has been an AYE guest presenter and is the author of many books and articles (including The Software Project Manager's Handbook: Principles That Work at Work and It Sounded Good When We Started: A Project Manager's Guide to Working with People on Projects with co-author Roy O'Bryan, who has also been to AYE).

I'll let you know as we post new articles...and remember if you're an AYE alum, you can submit an article, too. Just send it on to me at derby at estherderby dot com.