Dec 11, 2016
The Software Process and Measurement Cast 421 features our essay on vanity metrics. Vanity metrics make people feel good, but are less useful for making decisions about the business. The essay discusses how to recognize vanity metrics and the risks of falling prey to their allure.
We will also have columns form Steve Tendon with another chapter in his Tame The Flow: Hyper-Productive Knowledge-Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban, published by J Ross (buy a copy here). Steve and I talked about Chapter 13. Finally, Gene Hughson will anchor the cast with an entry from his Form Follows Function Blog. Gene and I started talking about leadership patterns and antipatterns.
Re-Read Saturday News
In this week’s re-read of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, Copyright 2002, 33rd printing), we conclude Part Three with the sections titled the Last Stand, Flack, Heavy Lifting, and Rally. I suspect we have 3 or 4 weeks left before moving to the next book, BUT we still have a number of ideas to extract from this book.
If you are new to the re-read series buy a copy and go back to week one and read along!
I have not heard any nay sayers on the idea of re-reading Carol Dweck’s Mindset next; however, just be to fair I am going to include a poll at the end to decide between Mindset, Thinking Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman) and Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). I would like your opinion!
Takeaways from this week include:
- You are responsible for the atmosphere that you create.
- Leaders and teams bear the consequence of not dealing with bad attitudes.
- When someone leaves a team everyone will mourn to some extent.
Visit the Software Process and Measurement Cast blog to participate in this and previous re-reads.
Next SPaMCAST
The Software Process and Measurement Cast 422 will feature our interview with Phil Lew. Phil and I talked about the topic of Agile risk management. We explored how risk can be managed in Agile projects and the barriers to effective risk management.
Shameless Ad for my book!
Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: “This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, for you or your team.” Support SPaMCAST by buying the book here. Available in English and Chinese.