6
votes
Accepted
How to solve a code challenge from a manager perspective
Fascinating question and an excellent interview question. (Technically a poor fit for PM:SE because there is no authoritative answer - which is what makes it a great interview question). That said, I ...
- 8,738
4
votes
Ensuring team motivation and project progress in a highly complex software project
the complexity of our software project is draining their motivation/enthusiasm/...
That's mostly bullshit. Technical problems very rarely drain motivation. There are many sources of draining ...
- 175
4
votes
How many hours should the development team spend on skills improvement during work?
...has produced great results so far.
Sounds promising! I can think of several approaches to managing skills improvement / professional development in the context of scrum:
Arguably, professional ...
- 3,485
3
votes
Dealing with inherited development team
This is a very broad question and right on the verge of being off-topic as both too broad and an opinion poll. Having said that, I've been in this position and it is daunting.
The only advice I would ...
- 4,424
2
votes
How technical should a Project Manager be?
The requirements for a project manager always go out from a project profile.
Check DPCI for instance. You can use risk profiles as well.
More technical experience:
Small - you just won't have ...
2
votes
How technical should a Project Manager be?
While I have seen projects completed successfully with non-technical PMs, I've also seen a lot of disasters. (That's one of the pushes I had to move from programming to PM.)
One point I have not seen ...
- 4,532
2
votes
How technical should a Project Manager be?
The project manager should have a good understanding of the technologies involved in the project. Not that they can code, but understand how the pieces fit together from a high level. Leadership and ...
- 71
2
votes
Dealing with inherited development team
I am taking a different perspective from Marv and dash here. I would initially challenge your assessment of your team. First, your statement that the interview process had issues suggests a lack of ...
- 37k
2
votes
How many hours should the development team spend on skills improvement during work?
As you put Scrum tag I will answer from the Scrum point of view.
The team should spend as much time for learning as they think it is necessary to produce product increment every sprint according to ...
- 394
2
votes
Ensuring team motivation and project progress in a highly complex software project
Developers like to make software which solves the business problem in an elegant and generic way, such that new requirements can fit nicely into a greater system.
Solving that problem, of adjusting ...
- 926
2
votes
Distributed Risk Register and Facilitation of Risk-Based / -Aware Thinking
As always, @DavidEspina's answer is excellent. On the other hand, since this problem presented itself in my environment this morning, I thought I'd share.
I keep a Risk Breakdown Structure, which ...
- 8,738
2
votes
How to solve a code challenge from a manager perspective
I see a developers' manager's responsibilities, in broad strokes, to be three things:
To create/bring together the culture/team
To remove impediments to the team's work
To get out of the way.
...
- 14.8k
2
votes
What technical skills are "A Must" for PM?
These days there are a lot of confusion on the role of a Project Manager in the software development arena based on the adoption of Agile methods like Scrum.
Companies and recruiters are mistakenly ...
- 386
2
votes
What technical skills are "A Must" for PM?
Each environment or organization requires its own unique set of skills.
Hence, some kind of generic are:
1) To be able to build SDLC from scratch (at least its initial version);
2) To be able to ...
- 309
2
votes
How does project management manage people with differing abilities?
There are a few factors to consider.
One would be the type of team. If the team is self-organizing, the individuals would not be assigned to tasks. Instead, the team would determine who should be ...
- 18.7k
2
votes
Skill Matrix with various Technology
What is the value of an overall score? Why degrade a person's skill score by averaging other lower or non-existent skill scores that have little to no bearing on that person's tasks. What value does ...
- 37k
1
vote
How does project management manage people with differing abilities?
TL;DR
How does project management address the issue of managing people with differing abilities?
I don't think there's a single, canonical answer to this question. The approach depends on the ...
- 49.2k
1
vote
How does project management manage people with differing abilities?
You assign a human to a task the exact same way you assign a tool, albeit humans are more complex. The process of assignment is the same. If you need to cut something, you are not going to use the ...
- 37k
1
vote
What technical skills are "A Must" for PM?
What Technical skills is "A Must" for PM to be successful [...] in Software Development?
Obviously you need to be able to handle office software. Like an email client, a word processor, ...
- 8,348
1
vote
What technical skills are "A Must" for PM?
Excellent Communication skills as PM spend about 80% of his time in communication between team, management, client and stakeholders, the technical skills comes Second but what is most important of it ...
- 123
1
vote
What technical skills are "A Must" for PM?
People who climb in business are those that make money for that business, which means they can sell. That means salesability, serviceability, politics, perseverance, adaptibility become key skills. ...
- 37k
1
vote
What technical skills are "A Must" for PM?
No definite "musts" but an understanding of developer toolchains, software stacks and techniques like CI, source control and virtualization would be an advantage. Also, knowing how to get the best out ...
- 6,071
1
vote
How to solve a code challenge from a manager perspective
I believe that as a manager you should not provide the answer but the route to the answer. Ask questions to give the developer a path to choose from, just as you've done.
As a SCRUM Master I try to ...
- 344
1
vote
Distributed Risk Register and Facilitation of Risk-Based / -Aware Thinking
On projects that I have overseen, I have not had perfect success in delivering my vision of how a risk log should look at the project level, in that it should contain the highest six or seven threats ...
- 37k
1
vote
How many hours should the development team spend on skills improvement during work?
Kanban offers a great way to handle continuous improvement. You just need to introduce slack in the system. A developer can pick up work from the continuous improvement board whenever they're blocked.
- 111
1
vote
Dealing with inherited development team
I see you've posted a number of questions in the past few days, so I'm going to make some assumptions that they're related - I hope that's accurate. It sounds like you have a number of Agile teams (...
- 16.8k
1
vote
Dealing with inherited development team
I agree with Marv. Listen, diagnose and eventually carefully medicate with a treatment plan.
I've been in this situation and build up a skills matrix which was split into available skills and ...
- 229
1
vote
What is the most effective way to gain experience that can lead to working in a PM role, in the software industry?
It's crucial that you become acquainted with the world of programming.
I have seen scheduling disasters happen because PM's couldn't tell the difference between compiling, coding and debugging.
The ...
- 4,532
1
vote
How technical should a Project Manager be?
To me, the Project Manager should be technically good in terms of applications. If otherwise, the team can easily make him/her stupid in terms of estimation & many. It is not the only factor but ...
- 11
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible