Better Software Magazine Articles

Why Am I Always Getting Bad News in the Eleventh Hour?

This article is a departure from previous columns. Kenton and Ryan role play the stress and friction between a typical product manager and an engineering team lead. This article may make you squirm, but it brings out the issues of teams attempting to do the best thing from completely different perspectives.

Kenton Bohn's picture Kenton Bohn Ryan McClish
Effective Prioritizing Prioritizing Effectively as a Team

If you’ve ever worked on a development project, you know you can never be that sure that everything will be completed on deadline. By prioritizing actively, you can change success from something binary—either we make it or we don’t—into something more gradual. By doing this, you increase the chance of succeeding in delivering something. If you prioritize really well, that something may even turn out to be far more valuable than anything you penned down in your initial plan.

Tobias Fors's picture Tobias Fors
My Team Is Agile, but My Organization Is Not! What Can I Do?

In this FAQ column, Sanjiv Augustine advises how to upgrade your organization's portfolio management by addressing inefficient, outdated, and value-killing portfolio management processes.

Sanjiv Augustine's picture Sanjiv Augustine
Management Value Management Myth 30: I Am More Valuable than Other People

Just because you have a fancy job title doesn't mean you can manage your team members by bossing them around. Servant leadership is an important skill for managers, as the best managers are those who serve the people who work for them.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Diane Zajac-Woodie talks about where business analysts fit on agile teams How Agile Helped a Business Analyst Discover Her True Value: An Interview with Diane Zajac-Woodie
Video

Diane Zajac-Woodie sat down to discuss her upcoming presentation at Agile Development and Better Software Conference West 2014, why the business analyst role doesn't get the attention it deserves, how the BA role can make a difference on agile teams, and her alter ego as the Agile Squirrel.

The Essential Product Owner—Championing Successful Products: An Interview with Ellen Gottesdiener
Video

In this interview, Ellen Gottesdiener talks about her presentation at Agile Development Conference and Better Software Conference West 2014, the importance of having context for requirements, good ways to set value considerations for requirements, and the common mistakes of product owners.

Is Software Configuration Management Technology Regressing?

There are ever-growing ways to organize your project assets with public domain configuration management tools. There's a mistaken belief that these free software configuration management (SCM) alternatives can be just as powerful as leading commercial tools.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
Estimate Your Work Need to Learn More about the Work You’re Doing? Spike It!

How do you estimate work you've never done before? One proven method is to spike it: Timebox a little work, do some research—just enough to know how long it will take to finish the rest of the work—and then you can estimate the rest of the work. You don’t waste time, you can explore different avenues of how best to complete the task, and your team learns together.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Test Managers Management Myth 29: I Can Concentrate on the Run

Busy managers get used to making decisions on the fly. But, some decisions require more thought and consideration than others. Johanna offers some tips for knowing when you need to slow down, take a seat, and give a problem your undivided attention.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Avoiding the Prioritization Trap

With incoming priorities being requested by just about everybody, how in the world can you and your team prioritize? Brandon shows you some innovative techniques that you can use to turn chaos into order.  One surprising approach is simply handling priorities on a first-in, first-out basis.

Brandon Carlson's picture Brandon Carlson

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