What’s Wrong with this Picture? Have you ever read something that bothered you, but couldn’t put your finger on exactly why? I found myself in that position after I read George Dinwiddie’s recent blog entry about Blocking. Scott Ambler’s “blocking” doesn’t bother me. I don’t see that giving management the information they need, in the format they need it, a problem. If doing this allows the team to continue working on their tasks providing value (via working software) to the clients, I’m all for it.

Problems or Opportunities? Where should you focus your effort?

This system must have 99.9% availability.” Says who? “We’re in financial trouble, and there’s going to be a lay-off.” Says who? “Management won’t let us purchase the new tool like they said we could.” Says who? Any statement that doesn’t include “Who Said”, needs to have “Says who?” as a response.

I found more information on view points. These are referred to in NLP as Perceptual Positions.

We recently pruned the fruit trees in the backyard. I did it by myself the previous time, and the results were, well, interesting.

Although the main highway bypassed the town years ago, the namesake for the popular 1960s television series is still a bustling community, and a fair amount of traffic enters Mayberry’s downtown from the north on the US Highway 52 business spur every morning. In town for a week of consulting work, we were able to observe the recent road construction along that route and watched a trio of local citizens demonstrate their own unique management styles. Let’s take a look at how these characters traffic management closely parallels common styles of software project management.