PeterSchuh.com

Meetingpalooza — if only it were half as cool as it sounded.

Meetings inevitably strike when we are deepest into the productivity zone, abruptly jolting us away from half-implemented solutions and half-formed inspirations. Worse, for some of us, numerous meetings crater the landscape of the day, forcing us to repeatedly stop what we are doing and toss away an hour of productivity (or, at least, that’s too often the way it feels).

Meetings, none-the-less, are an essential tool for communication and collaboration. They can be the fastest way to build consensus around an issue, to quickly solve a problem, or to plan the next two weeks of work for an entire team. We use meetings quite a bit for purposes such as this on agile teams.

Assuming you are already attending the meetings that make you and your team more productive, here’s a list of techniques to use to thin down the time spent in meetings that make you less productive: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been looking at a lot of resumes lately. I like to look at every resume that comes through — briefly — because I don’t really trust resume screens (automated or human). However, there is one resume screen that I have started using that I now wish I could automate. It goes like this:

1. Open the resume
2. Search for agile, scrum, and extreme programming
3. If these terms show up in the skills section AND NOT in any other part of the resume–such as work experience, training or education — delete the resume

To be clear, if none of those terms appeared anywhere in the resume I will continue to look at it.

It is a unfortunate milestone for the agile community that agile can now go alongside CMM and OO as part of the requisite resume boilerplate.

After a year of great work our latest maintenance guy headed back to Iowa to be closer to his daughters and grandchild. So, last Tuesday evening, my wife posted an ad on craigslist for a new maintenance guy to handle the issues that inevitably crop up with our rental properties. We offered $20 an hour and the maintenance guy has to have his own vehicle, his own tools, and general plumbing and electrical experience. We offered only part time work — five to 40 hours a month depending upon demand.

My wife published the ad at 9:50 pm Tuesday evening. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve seen quite a few teams (and not just newbie teams) grapple with this problem. The team has come up a bit short on available effort and can’t hit the release date at the end of the iteration. Just another day will do it, really. Extending your iteration a day to hit the release is a very tempting idea, but it is the very last thing you want to do. That decision simply leads the team down a road of pain. I forgot that lessen a couple months back and allowed a team to travel that road. It went something like this:

Friday the 5th

Advocate for the extension: “We’re just a little too tight this iteration. If we move the retro and planning meeting from Tuesday morning to Tuesday afternoon then we can release in the morning and hit our iteration goal.”

Me: “Okay, is there anything we can take out of the iteration backlog so that the team can still deploy on Monday?”

Advocate for the extension: “No. Everything has to go in.”

In retrospect, that statement should have set off alarm bells Read the rest of this entry »

The solution sheets practice can be used to quickly and accurately define a previously undocumented feature, user story or initiative. One solution sheet can generate all the detail and agreement required to begin development on a surprisingly large chunk of work. I’ve used this technique to quick start projects, to bid on big fixed cost initiatives, and to provide a sensible alternative to otherwise onerous documentation requirements. Slap a set of solution sheets together to create a ream of USEFUL documentation. Read the rest of this entry »

Newsflash. I own four small apartment buildings (well, for now, the banks own them, my wife manages them, and I’m legally and financially on the hook when bad things happen). For me, managing rental property and software development teams are not nearly as disjointed activities as they may seem. A tragedy of the commons, for example, can happen in either place.

A tragedy of the commons occurs when a public resource is overused or misused by individuals each acting in their own interest, where each instance of overuse or misuse has a greater benefit to the individual than the incremental harm it does to the public resource. Eventually, however, this can cause the resource to be spoiled beyond recovery. Hence the tragedy. For concrete examples, think overfishing or global warming.

My wife and I differentiate our properties by keeping them well-maintained. We pile on the amenities (AC, dishwashers, hardwood floors, rehabbed kitchens and baths). And, initially, we threw in freebies (free Internet access, free laundry, free applications). Well, applications are no longer free, and neither is the laundry.

Read the rest of this entry »