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1500 questions
26
votes
6 answers

What makes an effective email status report? Why?

In project management, what criteria make an effective email status report? How often should a status report be sent to be useful? Daily? Weekly? Every sprint end?
LewisLin
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26
votes
6 answers

How to organize knowledge within a wiki?

Using wikis as a knowledge database becomes more popular since a few years. But now I realized that most of the knowledge is lost because: articles are out-dated there is more than one page for the same subject one cannot find the right page,…
Christian Strempfer
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26
votes
8 answers

Toxic culture - I'm putting in more resources to help the project move faster, but people are slowing down

Background: I work in a company that has a bad culture: everybody has been treated the same: The same salary, no rewards for high achievers, and no punishment for bad employees, including people who have a part-time job during work hours while not…
giovanapc
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26
votes
3 answers

Scaled scrum/agile frameworks (SAFe vs. Nexus vs. LeSS) comparison

Would someone please shed some light on the differences between: LeSS: https://less.works/ Nexus: https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide SAFe: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/ Background: I work in a company with about 50 developers,…
testTester
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25
votes
4 answers

Why does Pivotal Tracker discourage estimating points for bugs and chores?

Pivotal Tracker "strongly discourages" estimating velocity points for bugs and chores – you have to change a setting and accept a warning to be able to do it. They explain why here, but I just don't understand it. Here is an excerpt: By measuring…
callum
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25
votes
3 answers

In Scrum, how to estimate research stories?

In our Scrum team, when there is uncertainty about a story or the team is not sure about how to implement it, we take up a research story first. Based on the findings of this research story, we are able to estimate the base story better. Should we…
Ashok Ramachandran
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25
votes
14 answers

Are 40 hour work-weeks (no overtime) acceptable for development teams?

No matter what our current conditions are, it seems like my team is always working 40 hour work-weeks. Under normal work conditions this would be fine, but as we approach a deadline on a major product, we really should have all members dedicated…
Harlan Wescott
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25
votes
18 answers

What are the current tools available for PM?

What are the current up to date project management tools to use? I have been using dotProject which I know is outdated, what ones are out there and the best for small to medium projects? To be more specific: A tool for tracking things like time,…
Kieran Andrews
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25
votes
15 answers

Dealing with a coworker who keeps making the same mistakes over and over

I've been struggling in a peculiar situation since a while ago and would like your inputs on it. In our project (which is a maintenance project), there are some tasks that are done from time to time (on a weekly basis) and, although simple, needs to…
Tiago Cardoso
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25
votes
9 answers

What's the exact definition of "Program Manager"?

I'm still confused with the title 'Program Manager' after I went through this site and searched over threads. Actually I haven't seen many 'Program Managers' in practice. Is it a regular role in PM? What's its definition and role?
fifth
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25
votes
10 answers

How to avoid being interrupted?

As a project manager, I think it's important to be heard. I find that many times, even when just meeting people, I am getting interrupted mid sentence. Can anyone out there provide tips on how to grow past this? I'm not sure if it's a natural…
Ryan
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25
votes
7 answers

Is PMP certification an appropriate career goal for someone about to start a career in project management?

Is PMP certification a requirement for a successful career in Project Management? At which point would it be appropriate for a newly starting project manager to plan to include PMP certification?
blueberryfields
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25
votes
9 answers

Which sticky note is the stickiest?

The question might sound a tad silly, but I'm actually trying to solve a real problem. Our team room has a glass wall, which we also use as our kanban board with hand-written swimlanes (= status) and sticky notes (= tasks). The glass wall also has…
Martin R-L
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25
votes
6 answers

Where should design be incorporated in an agile process?

We use a scrum-based agile development process. But where should design get incorporated? Separate user stories? Tasks on stories? We currently think of design as a separate task and break it out as a separate user story with estimated points. The…
chrishomer
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25
votes
6 answers

Should I ask my boss not to come to retrospectives?

I am a Scrum Master for a small team (8 devs). I have been having trouble getting engagement from many of the team members, especially the junior team members. My boss missed two retrospectives because he had other meetings and I started making…
ciara dunn
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