Category: project management

Scream Free Project Management

October 10, 2008 by mcottmeyer

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to read a book by Hal Edward Runkel called Scream Free Parenting. The title is a little misleading because the book is not really about screaming and the lessons Hal teaches go beyond just parenting. The book is about controlling your anxiety so you can build healthy relationships.

The key idea of the book is that anxiety is at the root of much our conflict. Think about it… we want better behavior from our kids, we are not getting it, and not getting that desired behavior stresses us out. When we yell at our children, we are really saying "I want to be calm, you are not allowing me to be calm, I demand you change your behavior so I can be calm".

Filling the Product Backlog: Go For Excitement

October 1, 2008 by peterstev

Picture courtesy of jakuza@Flickr

Once you know who you are building the product for, the next step is to create a list of features which will excite your customers and get them to use and buy one of your products. Which functions should you put into the system, and why? The user story workshop creates the initial product backlog.

This workshop is similar to the last workshop where you identified the users and buyers of your systems. This workshop needs the same people, except that the importance of the development team rises as you get closer to implementation. It is also desirable to have some real users represented. The workshop structure structure is simple:

1. Review the format of User Stories and the Kano Model.
2. For each Role,
1. Identify the main goals
2. Identify the functions which that person wants the system to perform to achieve those goals
3. Decide on next steps: Homework or Implementation

Why Managing Small Projects is Harder

April 17, 2008 by JurgenAppelo

Some people think that managing small projects is easier than managing big projects. They are right, unless the economies of scale require you to manage a number of those small projects at the same time. In that case, managing small projects is a lot harder than managing a big project!

Dedicated servers vs. shared servers

Many web sites are too small to run on their own dedicated servers. I know, I've built a lot of those sites. They usually run on shared servers (together with other web applications for different customers). As many system administrators know, management of a shared server is a lot more work than management of a dedicated server. On a shared server, the applications are fighting for the same resources (memory, drive space, database connections). And we must try to make sure that, when something goes wrong in one application, it doesn't bring down all the others too. Unfortunately, this does happen occasionally. One time it might be because of a Denial-of-Service attack against one particular site, another time it's simply because I screwed up again with one of my infamous infinite error loops. Customers often complain when problems with another site causes a failure on theirs. We then kindly suggest that they open up their purse and get themselves a dedicated server. Or, as a bus driver might say, "If you can afford yourself a taxi, sir, then why take a bus?"