Better Software Magazine Articles

Is Agile Breaking Product Management?

It can be a challenge for a product manager to know how to lead an agile software team. As product managers take on many different roles throughout a project lifecycle, there can be confusion, resulting in the product manager doing what nobody else wants to do. Steve Johnson offers a perspective of the agile product manager that every software developer should know.

Steve Johnson's picture Steve Johnson
Scrum Ceremonies An Innovation in Scrum Ceremonies: Peer Feedback

Traditionally, the project manager or ScrumMaster is responsible for evaluating a team's performance. But peer feedback, when each member of a team picks another member, observes him or her, and then shares thoughts and suggestions about that other team member’s work, can also be very valuable to continuous improvement.

Rajeev Gupta's picture Rajeev Gupta
Indispensable Employee Management Myth 36: You Have an Indispensable Employee

An employee may become indispensable through arrogance or happenstance. These employees can cause bottlenecks and often prevent others, as well as themselves, from learning and growing professionally. "Firing" these indispensable employees sets your team free to work even when the expert is not available.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
the Season for Annual Planning 'Tis the Season for Annual Planning: How to Have a Jollier Experience This Year

One of the primary goals of annual planning is to translate aspirational strategic plans into realistic execution plans. Sadly, rather than delivering plans we can all feel good about and believe in, too often it leaves us depressed about the work ahead of us. This article shares five practical principles to remove the emotions associated with annual planning.

Catherine Connor's picture Catherine Connor
Are You Done or Done-Done?

Probably one of the most frustrating roles a manager has to master is how to know the true status of work being performed. To a developer, completing 80 percent of the work may be good enough, but is it  even close to being really done? Masha Nehme shows techniques you can use to verify task completion.

Masha Nehme's picture Masha Nehme
Friendly Competition Management Myth 35: Friendly Competition Is Constructive

Competition between teams does not improve performance. In fact, the added stress may shift team members' focus from creating a quality product to self-preservation due to fear of failure. Johanna suggests managers emphasize collaboration between teams over competition.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Agile Planning The Five Levels of Agile Planning

Contrary to popular belief, agile projects require as much planning as any other project type. It is the timing of this planning and how we attempt to minimize wasted effort that is different from other approaches. This article attempts to explain the different levels of agile planning and how we utilize them in an ongoing project.

Paul Ellarby's picture Paul Ellarby
Project Management in Cloud Development

Cloud-based software development definitely changes how project managers need to approach their projects and lead their teams. Cloud development is not the same as traditional software product  development and requires a unique mix of traditional project management and agility. Project managers considering working on cloud-based projects need to read what Sridhar Kethandapatti has to say.

Sridhar Kethandapatti's picture Sridhar Kethandapatti
Avoiding Over Design and Under Design
Slideshow

The question of how much design to do up-front on a project is an engaging conundrum. Too much design often results in excess complexity and wasted effort. Too little design results in a poor architecture or insufficient system structures which require expensive rework and hurt more in the...

Al Shalloway, Net Objectives
Develop a Defect Prevention Strategy—or Else!
Slideshow

Defects occurring throughout the development of a software project penalize the project. The effort spent remediating these defects robs the project team of valuable time, resources, and money that could otherwise be used for further innovation and delivering the highest possible quality...

Scott Aziz, Cognizant

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