Author Archives: Bob Reid

Promoting Projects to Success

Posted on by

The first step in a successful project, other than how it supports strategy, is to sell the project throughout your organization – up front and often. Once it’s fully supported and underway you’ll want to continuously promote progress and keep the team inspired.

Here are a few ideas to create awareness of your project and keep momentum.

  1. Get on the agenda of departmental meetings and talk up your project.
  2. Give the project an unfamiliar or catchy name that piques curiosity.
  3. Put a large project chart somewhere visible, near the team, and mark it up to show progress.
  4. Have team offsite meetings where you can focus only on the project (phones off!).
  5. Create a project logo.
  6. Get items printed with the Project Logo – like coffee mugs or tee shirts.
  7. Have a Project Launch! – but not too soon – and only one.
  8. Get logo stickers printed for the team’s laptops.
  9. Make 4 Dummies book covers and use for in-progress team awards.
  10. Celebrate early failures as learning experiences. Don’t be punitive.
  11. Use any excuse for food and beverages – often.
  12. Make progress updates in a company newsletter or blog. Start a project blog.
  13. Speak about the project at a conference (great for recruiting, too).
  14. Promote the fact that team members got some time off after the project crunch. Then – everyone will want to join your next project.

If you promote your project enough and recognize your team’s contributions you will have a line of people wanting to join your team.

Please let me know what ideas have worked for you for promoting projects and getting the best people on your team. Thanks!

“Focus on appreciation as much as achievement.”
~Tim Ferriss

 

What Developers Want

Posted on by

If you are a Development Manager here are 5 things that your Developers will thank you for.

1. Quiet: Developers want and need quiet uninterrupted time to write code and solve problems. The need for continuous hours of quiet, uninterrupted code writing is crucial. Uninterrupted means absolutely uninterrupted. Do all you can to restrict direct access to Developers.

For the definitive answer on quiet, and why it is a Developer priority, see Paul Graham’s post: Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.

2. GSD: Cut the non essentials and Get Stuff Done: Read Getting Real, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals, now Basecamp).

3. Trust: One good Developer will accomplish more than 10 average Developers. Find your top-10 Developer(s). Trust him/her to guide you in the right direction. Don’t manage developers by committee or consensus.

4. Flexibility: Developers are unique individuals. Developers will get more done working at home than when working in the office. They will thank you if you can solve simple life problems, like suggesting work at home while waiting on a delivery. Learn the unique ways to reward each developer.

5. Professionalism: There are 2 types of Developers: (Type B) those that go home after 8 hours and (Type A); those that code at home for fun, read about development, go to meet-ups and conferences, teach others, and contribute code to the open-source community. Promote and protect your Type A professionals.

One last idea for the non-Developer Development Manager. Learn how to code and learn the language that your Developers speak. If you take this as a homework assignment to do on your own time, you will better empathize with the Developer who is working after hours or the one on call for production code.

“One really good person will get done in a day what ten not-so-good people will never get done.”
~James M. Spitze, SCC Sequoia

On-boarding – Key to a Great First Impression

Posted on by

You really can’t overemphasize that first day at work experience. When I arrived at my first professional job, my new manger eventually came to meet me. The next words as we walked on were: “now, where am I going to put you”. I realized that he hadn’t thought about me after the interview and had done nothing in anticipation of my arrival. I definitely didn’t feel welcomed or that I was part of a team. I’ve never forgotten that first impression.

As a hiring manager you can make sure a new team member is expected and welcomed. After all, they have just gone through a grueling job search process and chose you over another job somewhere else. Have a clean desk with all the equipment they will need and introduce them to everyone, even if they previously interviewed with everyone. Have an on-boarding agenda that lets the new person spend time with each team member and start them immediately on a first project. Arrange for lunch on the first day and make sure they find their way around. Introduce them outside of the immediate team and with other people whom they will work with. Consider an after-hours team meetup with the new person before their actual start date. Do all of this is in addition to HR’s on-boarding process.

“Life is not a dress rehearsal.”
~Rose Tremain

The Power of the Monthly Report

Posted on by

The Monthly Report is a lost art. We may have been too quick to abandon this artifact or, possibly, it was never a part of your company culture or personal habit.

Consider the positive returns gained from a small investment of time in creating a monthly report. As a checklist-driven person I see obvious benefits of documenting where you’ve been, even if you are the sole reader of your very own monthly report.

Benefits:
A monthly report is a report card to yourself, your management or to your company. After all, if you believe in what you are doing and that you are doing a good job at it, why wouldn’t you want to share that? By periodically looking back you can track your progress and trajectory. Are you heading in the right direction? Are you meeting goals, deadlines, and any required administrative check-offs?

People love recognition. If you can recognize the achievements of others it has a powerful effect on future performance. Recognition, especially in writing, is an awesome productivity tool in itself. The Monthly Report is a great place to regularly share team successes.

A summary of monthly reports automatically yields quarterly and annual reports. Collectively these reports are irrefutable personal leverage at performance review meetings.

And – possibly most important – monthly reports are key to updating your resume.

Format:
Keep the report format simple. A monthly report can be as simple as a list of dated entries in a journal. If the report is to be shared/upward you might establish a consistent format, with meaningful metrics and results. If monthly reporting is too frequent, consider keeping notes and creating a summary every few months.

“I’m trying to free your mind but I can only show you the door.”
~Morpheus, The Matrix