Author Archives: Chris Sims

Getting a New Hire Up and Running – October Engineering Managers Support Group

Leave a reply

You have found an ideal candidate, made him an offer, and he starts in two weeks. Now what? At this month’s Engineering Managers Support Group meeting I will share an approach that worked well for me, and some lessons learned as well. Please bring your experiences to share, and together we will unearth best practices for integrating new hires into the team.

After that, we will have a facilitated discussion where participants can share challenges that they are facing and get feedback, ideas, and support from the group. The event is free and so it the pizza! Come out, join the discussion, and become a better manager.

We are meeting on Wednesday, October 24th, in San Mateo.
RSVP now

Share it!

FogBugz 6.0 – Stunning

Leave a reply

I went to Joel‘s demo of FogBugz 6.0 this morning. I have to say that Ben, the engineer in charge of UI, has done some spectacular work. This is the most usable web-app that I have ever seen. It seems every bit as interactive as a good old Windows application. Congrats to Ben, Joel, and the whole FogBugz team.

Share it!

Lunch With Joel Spolsky

Leave a reply

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in the ‘Multimedia Gulch’ area of San Francisco, having just shared some fine San Francisco Burritos with Joel Spolsky. It’s been a few years since we last chatted, and much has changed. Joel’s company, Fog Creek Software, has more than doubled in size. They have mostly filled their recently expanded office space and Joel is busy figuring out how much space they should get to accommodate future growth. A new version of FogBugz has just been released and Joel is doing a demo tour. I think he still has space available in a few of his Bay Area demos. If you get a chance, check it out. I’ll be there tomorrow morning in Mountain View.

Read the full article…

Share it!

The Most Important Qualities for an Engineering Manager to Possess

Leave a reply

Last night, the Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group examined the question “What are the most important qualities for an engineering manager to possess?” Each person was asked to answer the question based on their own experiences as a direct report. We went looking for the qualities that separated our best managers from the rest.

Read the full article…

Share it!

Agile Project Leadership Open Space

Leave a reply

Tonight I participated in an open space event put on by the Bay Area Agile Project Leadership Network. I did a short workshop on how to make the business case for agile. Though the presentation used no slides, I made use of some of the concepts and diagrams from this PowerPoint deck, which is in turn a subset of what I present in the Agile Overview workshops.

The event was well organized and the participants were a smart and enthusiastic bunch. I look forward to the next get together, on Tuesday September 11th.

Share it!

Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group August Meetup

Leave a reply

This month’s session will start with a short workshop on SWOT analysis, a tool commonly taught in business school to examine internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats. It was originally conceived to help corporations formulate high-level business strategy, but it has proven useful in a broad range of situations. SWOT is an excellent tool for evaluating business opportunities such as starting a new business, entering a new market, pursuing a new development project, or allocating resources in areas such as recruiting or training.

Read the full article…

Share it!