Archive for the 'Team Management' Category

But You’re Management!

October 20th, 2006 Posted in Team Management | Comments »

The desire of managers to be involved with technology is natural. They want to seem able to learn quickly and adapt. After all, failing to use new technologies puts a company at a disadvantage against its competitors. Effective use of technology can develop a small upstart into a best-of-breed market dominator. Management sees the potential [...]

So, Where Do You Work?

October 16th, 2006 Posted in Team Management | Comments »

A post at /. points out a USA Today article that notes a growing trend where people perform their jobs at places other than home and office. I realized that I have been using Starbucks as a makeshift office months ago. In general, being able to work at alternative places during atypical hours increases productivity. [...]

A Disitributed Workforce

June 2nd, 2006 Posted in Team Management | Comments »

“Few businesses are as spread out as MySQL, which employs 320 workers in 25 countries, 70 percent of whom work from home,” says Fortune’s Josh Hyatt in MySQL: Workers in 25 Countries with no HQ. A discussion of this can be found on Slashdot.

Coordinating Development with a Growing Team

May 31st, 2006 Posted in Software Engineering, Team Management | Comments »

The development team of a small company that I have recently joined is continually growing, and coordinating development efforts within this team requires more than controlling file permissions. Using file permissions as a primitive means of source code control worked when the team was small, but simply using file permissions and a de facto standard [...]

Managing Grunts and Minimizing Burnout

May 13th, 2006 Posted in Team Management | Comments »

Adam Knight exemplifies the burnt out tech worker and voices his frustration in AppleCared: My Life Inside Apple and AppleCare. Knight was employed as a customer care representative at Apple for four years before he decided to start a business venture with his friends. His daily responsibilities at AppleCare were mundane, and his position seemed [...]