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Building a Requirements Foundation with Customer Interviews

© 2004-2010 Esther Derby This article originally appeared in my newsletter, insights.  You can sign up to receive my newsletter using the form on the right. “Our customer doesn’t know what he wants,”...

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Achieving Agility: Means to an End, or End in Itself

(c) 2010 Esther Derby I recently spoke to a senior manager who wanted to know how “agile” his company was compared to other companies. When I asked what he’d gain from that information, he responded...

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A Manager’s Guide to Getting Feedback

© 2006-2010 Esther Derby Author’s Note: In general, anonymous feedback in the workplace doesn’t work. It destroys trust, and doesn’t give the opportunity for followup, clarification, or...

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Hiring for a Collaborative Team

If you’re a hiring manager, you know that a typical hiring process emphasizes technical skills, functional skills, and industry knowledge. Interpersonal skills are near the bottom of the list, if they...

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Self-facilitation Skills for Teams

© 2004-2010 Esther Derby Self-organizing teams don’t just organize the technical work. They make technical (and non-technical) decisions. Not every situation requires facilitation, but when a team...

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Know Thy Customer

© 2010 Esther Derby Understanding the market and your customers (and potential customers) is the first step in building products that will sell and keep the business in business. You need to know...

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The Appreciation Gap

Authors note: A recent blog post on Bob Sutton’s Work Matters reminded me of this little piece I wrote a while ago. A simple thank you can make a difference; appreciation builds good will, and reminds...

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Interviewing Your Next Boss

Authors Note:  The relationship between an employee and his/her manager determines how long a person stays with a company and to some extent how productive he’ll be while he is there.  That...

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Improve Financial Results by Focusing on Value, Not Costs

When managers want to improve financial results, they turn first to trimming costs.  This is the logical first place to look if balance sheets are your primary view into how the organization functions....

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Managing a Struggling Employee

Sooner or later every manager faces the same dilemma: What do I do when I inherit or hire an employee who turns out to be a poor fit for the job? Tom was the development manager for a supply chain...

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Successful Top Down Change Starts with Change at the Top

Most of the time, when I hear about “agile change,” someone in management has decided that Scrum (and maybe XP engineering practices) will improve quality and time to market for the company’s software...

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Seeing System Dynamics: Beyond Budget Reports

There’s a buzz about systems thinking in the software world these days. Systems thinking isn’t new. Jerry Weinberg’s An Introduction to General Systems Thinking was first published in 1975. Senge’s...

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As Goes the Contracting, So Goes the Contract

A while back, a colleague, Susan, called to ask me for some advice. “I’ve been planning a vacation with my family for months,” she said. “And now my new client wants me on-site next week. I’d be happy...

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A Manager’s Guide to Building a Relationship with the Team

“A talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while...

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Supporting Team-Based Work

Many of the companies I work with want the benefit of the team effect in software development. The managers in these companies recognize the enormous benefits teams provide to the company–creativity,...

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