Better Software Magazine Articles
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Simple Summaries Of Complex Projects How can we meaningfully summarize—in a brief status report without losing important details—the successes and setbacks our projects experience? |
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Keep Non-developers in the Loop Keeping QA members up to date on changes as they happen–through meetings, wikis, and email–can reduce the number of unnecessary bug reports and save you time and frustration. |
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Tale of a Yo-Yo Manager There is much more to empowering your team than simply stating "You're empowered." Consider the three Ws of empowerment: "what," "when," and "why" when creating boundaries that define which decisions are the team's and which need management approval. |
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Keys to Top-Notch Estimates If the construction industry estimated projects as poorly as the IT industry does, we would still be living in mud huts. Yet inaccurate project estimates have become the norm in the software industry. Find out how you can turn your estimates into reasonable predictions of project performance. |
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Going on a Picnic with James Watt What if you had a picnic and no one brought potato salad? Find out what picnic planning and steam engines have to do with project success and not just satisfying your customers but delighting them. |
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Advice for the New Leader As a new manager it's easy to fall into the trap of taking on more of your team's responsibilities than you should. Learn how to guide your team to success by stepping back and letting team members solve their own problems, learn from their mistakes, and most of all do what you hired them to do. |
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The Myth of Risk Management Risk management is an illusion. We must recognize that software projects are inherently risky and admit to ourselves that it's not the known problems that are going to cause our projects to fail. It's the risks that are unmentionable, uncontrollable, unquantifiable, or unknown that make projects crash and burn. |
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Software Quality and the Prisoner's Dilemma This industry spin on the classical dilemma illustrates the games we play when software quality is at stake and gives insight into why software managers who forego quality in order to reach a short-term marketing advantage are actually acting rationally. |
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Modern Distributed Teams Traditionally, managing distributed teams has been perceived as difficult. But the advent of effective modern processes and tools is breaking through the obstacles and making distributed teams a viable—and valuable—option. Find out how to make the most of people, processes, and tools to create and maintain a successful distributed team. |
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Pine Needles and Better Communication As a new Army Ranger, Payson acquired many hard-earned lessons. But dodging snakes and alligators while navigating a Georgia swamp one moonless night, he learned two lessons in particular that can help project managers navigate their software projects. |
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