Questions tagged [communication]
This tag includes questions about communication-related topics like information flow, meetings, and reporting; communications plan development and management; and challenges that a Project Manager or project team can face in regards to communication issues.
208
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What is the name of the practice of mapping problems and their inter connected relationships?
Some time ago I saw an article about a model where the different problems or dysfunctions of a team (or company) where identified.
Then, once the problems are identified, the relationship between them ...
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110
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What should my Product Owner do with Poor IT Management?
I am a data engineer, but my question pertains to my curiosity as to what my product owner should do in this case. I'm working on a team which I have recently found out has a high turnover rate and ...
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5
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588
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Is given-when-then a standard for how acceptance criteria should be worded?
I am having trouble understanding whether it is considered a best practice to write acceptance criteria in the Cucumber-style given/when/then format, or if there are some scenarios in which this is ...
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3
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213
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What to do with a team that will never evolve into an agile one?
Does agility assume that any group of people can evolve into an agile team with the help of a Scrum Master, or is it possible that some teams will never evolve and it is therefore not possible for the ...
- 2,436
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498
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How to create a useful valuable Scrum Master meet-up
I am trying to find a way of reinventing the Scrum Master Community of Practice (CoP) in my organisation into more of a working group.
We often find that people are disengaged or expect a presentation....
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101
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Is it appropriate to say that a technical task is easy to do given that it is?
I'm currently a junior PM with a small team of software engineers. Some of the engineers are junior, thus I assign relatively easy tasks for them to discover different parts of the codebase.
The issue ...
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13
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6
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3k
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Giving high level estimates to client without commiting to numbers
I'm working as project delivery manager of a Software Development Company. Often before project initiations, a long time and loyal customer contact me directly to request 'estimate' for some works ...
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143
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What is the difference between "active listening" and the "sender-receiver model"?
I don't quite understand the difference between active listening and the sender-receiver model.
active listening: The message receiver restates what’s been said to fully understand and confirm the ...
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604
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What is the difference between "status report" and "variance report"?
Quoting Rita Mulcahy's book-:
Status report-: This report describes where the project currently stands regarding the performance measurement baseline.
Variance report-: A variance report compares ...
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552
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Are there concrete differences between (SAFe + LeSS) Community of Practice and (Spotify) Chapter (and Guild) concepts?
SAFe promotes Communities of Practice (CoP) as groups of people who have a common interest in a specific technical or business domain and actively get together to sharpen up a set of skills.
LeSS ...
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164
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Is there such a thing as too much instant message communication for a remote team
The team wants each developer to let the other developers know what progress they are making on their stories . Ex "Ready for peer Review", "Peer Reviewed","QA passed", &...
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I'm a freelancer PM working with a remote client- I was hoping someone had some communication management advice
I'm PM with a reasonable amount of experience, both in person and remote. This is my first time working as a freelancer and I'm struggling a bit. My main problem is communication I think. My client ...
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156
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What to do when the team prefers private communications on mail and chat over collaborative tools like Jira?
I've noticed that a lot of discussion between a developer and a Product Owner happens in private conversations in various communication tools (Skype, Slack, email, etc). The reason is because these ...
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PM's monthly report includes the stats of the work hours, bug fix per developer
We are a cross functional product development teams that does monthly release.
There are 3 teams work together: my team works on web-development, team B works on embedded system and team C bridges us ...
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167
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How to communicate effectivelly with less knowledgeable individuals
Possibly related to How to communicate technical obstacles?.
In my current position I have found myself in difficulty when it comes to communicating technical difficulties or project management ...
- 173
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Should I ask my boss not to come to retrospectives?
I am a Scrum Master for a small team (8 devs). I have been having trouble getting engagement from many of the team members, especially the junior team members. My boss missed two retrospectives ...
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4
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603
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Responsibility of scrum master
We are new to scrum and team with most are experience devs. (even decades).
The project manager (experience dev but new to project management) gave a scrum master role to a junior BA. She is ambitious ...
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71
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How to efficiently manage large project where each team may be doing independent work?
I’m going to be managing a very large project across many teams; I anticipate close to 20. For smaller projects, I typically schedule weekly (or some regular cadence) meetings where a representative ...
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11
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How can I map stakeholders without offending anyone?
I want to map the stakeholders on a project to help form a communication plan.
The typical power vs. interest matrix (below) is very helpful, but I fear I can't store it in a document others may read....
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81
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task/workflow management best practice [closed]
I know this is not a specific question and I could rephrase it as such if necessary.
I am seeking recommendations on how to manage an individual (my own) task list or how best to create a work ...
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357
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Quicker Retrospectives? They are taking longer and are less effective now we are working from home because of COVID
I am after ideas to make things run more smoothly and more quickly.
I have been using a combination of MS Teams and online tools like GroupMap and Stormz.
But there are long pauses, and less to and ...
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2
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332
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How to keep part-time members of an agile software development team informed?
TL;DR
I'm looking for a recommended way of updating team members in their days off so that they are more or less informed of the changes in the product, the process or the company.
Full Story
...
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3
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322
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Safe spaces in scrum retrospectives
Background:
The development manager (my boss) and the scrum master like to introduce changes. My approach to changes is to ask why we need the change, explain why I think it is not useful (if it ...
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4
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199
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How to tell an estimation made by programmers is reasonable or not without technical skills?
I'm currently working on a game project. Since I don't have technical skills at all, sometimes it feels hard to doubt a programmer's estimation on a task is too much or not.
My solution is:
Break ...
6
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3
answers
3k
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Is a mid sprint check-in/catch-up a good idea
Scenario: With scrum teams doing a daily stand-up to inform team of progress (yesterday and today) and any impediments. I wonder sometimes do they actually bring up impediments, concerns or issues. ...
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4
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196
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Sharing important information effectively in an small group
I'm working in a software project with about 25 students (divided in 4 groups). As right now we use Slack for chatting and sharing important decisions we make. Slack is an communication tool similar ...
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3
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3k
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How should a Scrum Master deal with an angry stakeholder during a PO meeting?
As a Scrum Master, recently attended a meeting set up by PO with stakeholders, one stakeholder was concerned that the budget was not being spent properly. It got heated.
At the meeting, I was not ...
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29
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Who to pitch my product for placement in their store? [closed]
My team have come up with a product and we are wondering what’s the right person to call to talk about the product being placed in their store.
It’s somewhat a big chain of a tech shop (e.g. Public)
...
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2
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332
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JIRA - Use incoming emails to create tickets
Our team would like to use incoming emails (from Outlook) to create support tickets.
I've figured out how to successfully get this working, however, the formatting is awful.
When the ticket is ...
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3
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6
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385
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How to deal with client's staff that says "this will be easy"
I am an external project manager. The internal staff at a clients business have started making comments to the effect that "this requirement will be easy to deliver". Such comments are damaging our ...
- 173
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251
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Writing Better Milestone/Touchpoint Follow-Up Emails
I am a technical (software deployment) project manager. I regularly have clients request 15+ minute check-in calls, which I am happy to take. The calls are pre-scheduled and have no set agenda.
I ...
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88
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How to tell my project sponsor that few of the requirements cannot be met [closed]
My technical team proposed new features than the initial requirements. How do I communicate the same to my sponsor ensuring he is kept satisfied?
4
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3
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251
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Earning Respect of Team Members When I Know Very Little About the Topic?
I've recently been assigned project manager of a project which requires moderate-high degree of technical skills in machine learning that are above my level. Originally a programmer, I have previously ...
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4
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1
answer
88
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Small team in large team, using two boards in JIRA
We have one large project running at the company where I work as a developer. We have developers from different teams involved (different companies even), testers, analysts and whatnot. This large ...
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2
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2
answers
786
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How do you deal with external customers in agile projects
You are starting an agile project. As a scrum master you are facilitator and you assist the product owner with the backlog in creation as also in its maintance. You also coordinate with external ...
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78
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How can I encourage remote employees to ask for help?
We've recently acquired a new developer who's working remotely with occasional visits.
The initial period of friction has passed, but they're still very reluctant to ask for help and would spend ...
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2
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124
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What are the reasons that silos emerge within large corporations?
The literature is full of suggestions to break down silos which build over time within large organizations.
I was wondering why they form in the first place.
Is there maybe a benefit or a ...
- 191
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2
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98
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Give visibility to work being done by a subcontractor
My company has subcontracted a project and the subcontractor is using their own instance of JIRA to manage their work.
Because we use a different tool I opted to let them use the tools they know and ...
- 101
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2
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159
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Best practice for tracking management activities
Situation: My company is using external developers. These developers are working in a Scrum setting with a delivery manager to manage the communication with us.
The team is very satisfied with the ...
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2
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3
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71
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How to work in Implementations when your technical operations is in another time zone?
Any advice on working with implementations when all your devs and QA are on another timezone and not able to communicate too much online? This is my first experience being in a remote silo situation. ...
4
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3
answers
590
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Convincing my team that we need to split tasks by feature, not by work type
I'm in an agile team, with some developers, a designer and a ux guy. Sometimes we split some user stories into tasks when we think they are too big.
When doing this, I've always read that we should ...
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2
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3
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88
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How could someone use Kanban or a similar method for community engagement? [closed]
Looking for something process oriented, practical. Just some examples (as detailed as you care to provide) to have on hand. I'm having trouble differentiating between this example and, say, a small ...
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My manager is a local copy of Dr. House [closed]
How would you deal with your manager if he doesn’t see the company’s cultural problems and tries to convince you to behave passive-aggressive?
Let me explain the situation. I’m a software engineer, ...
0
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2
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81
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How should teammates discuss program design? [closed]
I'm trying to understand:
how teammates of a software-development team exchange their ideas about how a program's component (any part) should be designed
when requirements of a project changes and ...
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3
votes
3
answers
769
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Technique or good way to talk to functional manager
As a project manager in a matrix organization, I am having problems to deal with a resource, who is responsible to deliver a task, which is impacting on project schedule because the task is behind ...
8
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5
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268
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Why can't QA's share expertise and suggest new ways of working
I work as part of an eight-member agile team. When I joined the company I saw lots of problems in the team. I decided to share my past experience to help the team but the team saw me as a small person,...
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3
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76
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Having trouble influencing my boss first time round?
When my boss and I have contrasting opinions, he seems to take credit after realising that I was right despite initially acting dismissive at the time I advised him.
I have a feeling that this could ...
- 3,882
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1
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324
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What is unique about application development projects? [closed]
I'd like to understand the difference, from a project-management perspective, between application development and other, non-application development.
-2
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2
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534
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Conflict Management between Development team and design team [closed]
I have two different teams (which are separate implementation vendors) doing design and development for an implementation of Microsoft dynamics CRM, currently at the prototyping stage. The Design team ...
3
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3
answers
325
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How to plan a brainstorming session
I am in charge of a project in my company and currently trying to gather information about the current process in place and how to improve it on post-launch tracking.
In order to do so, my manager ...
- 133