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1500 questions
19
votes
5 answers
Planning poker on virtual teams
I'm looking for a way to make it easier to perform planning poker on a virtual team (i.e. a team that is not co-located with one another).
Requirements for a successful planning poker:
Since we're distributed, how can I do something that works well…
Matt Ruwe
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19
votes
7 answers
How to better balance resources in a cross-functional agile team?
I am the project manager for a team composed of employees who were hired specifically as QA or development prior to agile/scrum being adopted by the organization. Just for background, I came into the organization after the implementation of scrum.…
NightMan
- 833
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19
votes
8 answers
Rewards or Penalties? Or just rewards?
What motivational mechanism works more effectively - penalties or rewards? I'm also interested to know whether penalties are used in modern software development teams. If they are - in what form?
ps. Please pay attention that I didn't say "monetary"…
yegor256
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19
votes
6 answers
What value do project managers provide a software development team?
What value does a project manager bring? How do they benefit the technical members of the team who do the work (e.g., the software developers)? Why should software developers prefer to have a project manager as part of their team? What are some…
D.W.
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19
votes
8 answers
Implementing new software development process
Question:
Apologies for the long post, but I'm not sure how to handle this.
Background:
We have a development team of 3 situated in another city. The lead developer has been around for 6 years and the other developers have joined for < 6 months and…
Jeff S
- 191
- 3
19
votes
4 answers
Managing Without Meetings
What techniques have you used or would you recommend to update project status or resolve project conflicts other than meetings? This is a question from a company with a culture of meetings.
Bob Reid
- 932
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- 8
19
votes
6 answers
How to Create Better Communicators on Your Team?
I work with a team who is distributed. Most of our staff works remotely. As a result, communication is much more important.
The team consists of managers, supervisors, marketing personnel, web designers, web developers, testing engineers, and…
jmort253
- 9,537
- 7
- 42
- 88
19
votes
4 answers
How to appropriately balance project activities with support tasks
I have a small team of experts (12 staff) who do great project work. Unfortunately, their expertise makes them the go-to individuals on support tasks as well. The inability to focus on projects affects their productivity and sometimes has a negative…
CraigV
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19
votes
10 answers
What alternatives are there to a weekly status report to collect team members' progress on assigned work?
Each week I issue a personalised email to everyone in the business (there are only 17 of us) with the following headings:
Can you provide a brief status report for this week based on your assigned priorities (in this section I ask for status +…
cw84
- 611
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- 9
19
votes
17 answers
Is development experience required to become a PM in the IT sector?
This question has been stuck in my head for a long time.
To become a project manager in the IT sector, should one have development experience, or a strong focus on general project management skills? Which one is better and more suitable? Are there…
kitokid
- 531
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19
votes
6 answers
What is the purpose of the daily Scrum standup meeting?
I have a daily standup meeting with about 20 people. I only work with 2 of these 20 people. When it is my turn to stand up, I say what I've done and what I will do; it takes me about a minute. For the rest of the meeting, which takes anywhere…
user1969903
- 292
- 2
- 7
19
votes
9 answers
Individual accountability on agile projects
My organization has been doing waterfall for many years, but we are dipping our toes in the agile pond currently. So far we have had a couple successful projects using agile so everyone is gung ho about it. However, upper management has some…
RationalGeek
- 293
- 2
- 7
19
votes
6 answers
What personality traits suggest that a person should move towards project management?
I've just started as an intern for a big company, so this obviously doesn't immediately apply to me. I love programming, however, I'm still considering potential career paths I may be most suited for.
I've read a lot of stories on here about people…
Casey Patton
- 461
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- 10
19
votes
5 answers
Is it possible to use Agile methodologies in a fixed price contract?
Most clients understand a fixed price contract to be a fix of scope, budget and delivery date.
These would appear on the surface to be against the principals of Agile. So should Agile be recommended against in this situation or are there steps that…
Tim
- 293
- 2
- 8
19
votes
7 answers
Who does a product owner typically report to?
I'm trying to understand better how scrum teams fit into actual organizations.
I understand that Scrum is only concerned with the structure of the scrum team - I'm just looking for some examples here as to who a project owner of a scrum team might…
David Kennell
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