Greetings from the 2008 Scum Gathering!
At 9:00 AM this morning I was surprised to see about 25 more-or-less bright shinny faces in the room for Agile 101. I was even more surprised as people continued to trickle in until the room, setup for 50, was at capacity. Wow!
Many thanks to all who came out and participated.
Cheers,
I promised more detail about One-on-Ones. Over time, I’m planning to cover each item on my One-on-One agenda. As a refresher, here is my agenda for a half-hour One-on-One meeting:
I am finally getting around to doing my taxes. I went out and bought Turbo Tax Home and Business, installed it, and started working. At a certain point in the process, Turbo Tax crashes. Bleh! I fire it back up and try again, same crash same place. I click the “Tell Intuit about this problem” button. It comes back with a link to a ‘fix’.
When people are talking to you, are you really listening? Or are you starting to think about what you are going to say next? Are you sure you understand their meaning when you hear their words? Language lends itself to misunderstanding as easily as understanding. This makes for great comedy, unless the joke is at the expense of you and your team.
The Engineering Managers Support Group is meeting tonight!
Our topic: Active Listening.
Of course, we will also have our round-table discussion session, where you can get input from your peers on the challenges you are facing managing engineers. There will be yummy Thai food, and the usual assortment of beverages. All this, and it’s still free!
Last Saturday, I led two sessions at P-Camp. The first was “Agile 101”, and you can read about how that went here. The second session was “Why do Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail)?” In this session, the participants shared over 20 practices that they felt were key to the success of their past agile projects. Here we are discussing an idea.
I spent yesterday at p-camp, an unconference for agile product managers. The event was hosted at Yahoo! and put on by the folks at Enthiosys. I led two sessions: Agile 101, and Why do Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail)? This post is about the Agile 101 session. Watch for future posts about my other session, and some more pictures.
At the February IEEE Silicon Valley Technology Management Council meeting the group did an exercise to generated practical suggestions for implementing four management ideals. The group broke up into 4 teams; each considered one management ideal, and then reported their suggestions for implementing the ideal back to the whole group. The whole exercise took 30 minutes and included networking as well as idea generation.
Here are my notes on the ideas that each team generated. Clarifications and additions are welcome!
A manager who listens well…
– will be told more
– will be confided in
– will understand their people better
– will resolve conflicts easier
– will be listened to
The Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group took a look at One-on-One meetings in February. I promised the group that I would publish my suggested agenda for a one-on-one as well some pointers to further reading. Here it is.