• Uncategorized

    Project Managing on a Micro Scale

    Not micro-projects, necessarily, but micro-team: Greg and I. I thoroughly enjoy project management, enough so that I’m willing to do it at least a little in my free time every day. That’s checking on tasks’ statuses, project timelines, testing projects in progress, offering feedback and suggestions, and gently kicking in the ass. Well, as gently as I do anything.

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly linkage

    This week’s internet cruising: behavioral advertising icon – Coincidentally crossing my plate right after this tidbit of narrow-sightedness (see Greg’s comment there, too), I had to cackle a bit. I like the idea of disclosing–all the time, not just when you register for a service–that a site is gathering your behavioral information. I also agree that a weird triangle icon in the midst of a column of ads (text or image) won't get noticed and won't make sense. Release management, or “How to de-version your app” – Nice examination of the thought processes behind an app being released as a "beta", but not labeled as such, along with the classic…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly linkage

    This week’s internet cruising: How to keep someone with you forever – "You create a sick system." I wanted to cry when I read this. Looking Back — Discord&Rhyme – "To be successful at bootstrapping, you have to cut every feature except those you think are absolutely necessary. Then you cut some that you thought that you absolutely had to have. You compromise your design because you need to get the product to market. You ignore automated testing and documentation because your code is too unstable to be held back by rigorous processes." Launching beta, or “How to decide when and where to cut corners” – 200+ Seamless Patterns Perfect…

  • Uncategorized

    One-on-one meetings

    I’m going to put on my team lead hat for a minute. Many moons ago, I stumbled across and read Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby’s excellent Behind Closed Doors. One of many great managerial practices and recommendations in the book is to do one-on-one meetings: a regular (weekly) meeting between a manager and each of her charges to discuss project statuses, job satisfaction, progress in and reevaluation of professional goals, etc. I’ve done and seen this done with two different mindsets, each with their own uses and problems.

  • On Life and Love

    Quasi-daily linkage

    Coding Horror: The Non-Programming Programmer – Unfortunately, I’ve worked with a programmer who truly could not program, and it wasn’t pleasant. He talked a decent game and was crunk about technology, but he couldn’t bang out solutions to problems, and we all paid for it. That said, I’m in the middle of Seth Godin’s “Linchpin”, and while if you’re looking for a programmer, you should screen for that, rapport and general intelligence are pretty damn important. Also: I really like Noahlz’s February 22, 2010 6:48 PM comment in that thread. Nice process, but what about the engineering bits? – "The major issue is in focusing so much effort and time…