Month: December 2015

December 9, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Working Manager

That’s an oxymoron right?  Don’t all Managers/Leaders work?  I heard this term coined many years – “You’re a working manager, Greg” – okay, that’s good to know.  In the context of the below, I apply everything to the voice of the Software Development Manager. If you look at the difference between a Team Lead and a Manager – I’ve always equated the Team Lead to being the fun job – take an active role in coaching and mentoring, provide insights into what is happening on your projects and keep your hands in the mud.  If anything the Team Lead is

December 8, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Before I Go List

I’ve been watching/listening to some vintage Zig Ziglar since June whilst working on my personal goal setting.  What I love about his recordings is that I find myself sitting in the car – listening, laughing and nodding my head at what he says. My personal favourite is how before a vacation, we all become expert planners and builders in one fell swoop – making lists, checking them twice, and executing like a bat out of hell – so how is that different from any other day of the year? It’s not, we are, although not vacation, I’ve started to notice

December 7, 2015

Greg Thomas

Timeboxes are not One Size Fits All

Timeboxes are by definition the goal of trying to complete x amount of work in y amount of time.  When time is up so are you.  They have been applied to all sorts of industries and activities; Software Development Manufacturing Getting Ready for Bed The goal is to create small enough tasks that the user is comfortably able to estimate and complete in that box of time.  Can you code this in one day or in 1 week.  If you take a look at this definition from Wikipedia you can see how some project styles keep timeboxes quite small – 1

December 4, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Final Straw

Conflict in the workplace is nothing new – there is always someone you are not going to get along with, not see eye to eye with, butt heads with, etc, etc.  We’ve all worked with those people that we think are coasting through the day, leaving their work to others to pick up and take on. There are two paths to handling this situation – either confront them about it and find ways to work with them to make it better or walk away. This isn’t about walking away – that’s easy, push your chair back from the table stand-up,

December 2, 2015

Greg Thomas

Remember when you were the Newbie

I had something else in mind to write about tonight, but then in the middle of a break watched this video and immediately started laughing.  I don’t know what the context is (I don’t watch Scandal) but it brought me back to my first day starting with an ASP Hoster out of University – having other developers throwing projects and code at me and literally freaking out the whole day that I was 6 hours away from being fired when I wouldn’t be able to fix the shopping cart so customers could start buying again.  I went home that night and read all

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