Topics
- Earned Value Management (RSS) (8)
- Estimation and Pricing (RSS) (11)
- Older Topics (RSS) (20)
- Agile Software Development (RSS) (13)
- News (RSS) (7)
- People Skills (RSS) (7)
People Skills
People skills for software developers / software engineers and, in fact, technical workers in all industries
People Skills for Nerds – a Summary Video
This video summarises they key points I aim to make in this blog, that people skills are:
- Important, and
- Learnable (with time and practice)
The video is an edited extract of my talk at AgileRoots 2009. For the benefit of people who, like me, prefer skim reading to… Read more
References from my Agile Roots presentation
At Agile Roots, I promised to post references for my talk “Better Agile Through Stealing”. Here are my faviourite references on the topics I talked about. For each of the books, the main link is to a “dead tree” version of the book, with a secondary link to… Read more
Opinions
- The right attitude for learning and creativity is to "argue as if you are right and listen as if you are wrong"
- "The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course
People Over Process: the Importance of Social Capital
I recently enjoyed reading In Good Company. The book is addressed to a general business audience, but I found it very relevant to agile software development (particularly agile’s emphasis on people and their interactions). I recommend it to anyone interested in that side of agile.
From the back… Read more
Individuals and Interactions
Something’s bugging me. I think we’ve lost sight of our priorities in the agile software movement. We are spending too much time talking about processes and tools, and too little time talking about people and their interactions.
Think back to the Agile Manifesto. At the moment, we seem to… Read more
The Power of Negotiation
Negotiation, meaning “discussion intended to produce agreement”, is fundamental to every software project. (And other projects too – my examples just happen to come from the software industry.) Developers and customers must reach agreement on what the system is supposed to do. A wise agreement will define achievable goals and… Read more