A simple process for staying on top customer feedback — Consider your backlog of customer insight data to be a field of wheat ready to be harvested. In order to make the most of it, you have to review it before it goes stale. It may seem like there’s too much information for you to digest, but if you don’t…

Identify risk and address it before it’s too late — There’s nothing more satisfying than a project that goes off without a hitch. You want to deliver a high-quality product on time and within budget. You want your team to feel confident, cohesive, and capable of making the product a success. …

Hint: Get the Right People on the Team — The one secret to success in project management: good people. Good people make all the difference. They’re responsible for about 90% of any project’s success. Unfortunately, finding the right people is a real challenge. It’s not always easy to know who has what it takes to help you succeed. Here are some tips that can help you get started finding the right people for your project.

That Doesn’t Make You Want to Pull All Your Hair Out — Ok, real talk. It’s frustrating for project managers when their team doesn’t deliver on time. It’s frustrating for stakeholders that the product is not where it needs to be. It’s frustrating for the organization to find itself in a slow-growth situation with no end in sight. And it’s really, really…

Honesty is the Best Policy — Are you getting pushed for a precise project estimate and delivery date? Don’t try to fool yourself into thinking that you can meet that demand. You know better. Software development is difficult, and estimating how long it will take your team to complete a project is equally difficult. How are…

Enlist your team without abdicating responsibility as the leader — Recently, my team was tasked with making a decision between two competing priorities — business vs technology. The business team wants to implement a feature that would result in more revenue for the company, but the tech team needs more time to build out other infrastructure that is desperately needed…

I recently sat in a product wide status meeting. This is a meeting comprised of team leaders across 10 different teams. Not a small meeting. The purpose of the meeting is twofold: Create visibility across teams Unblock teams that are stuck It’s a new discipline at the company, so the…

Estimates are NOT commitments. But, estimates ARE the basis for decisions and tradeoffs. They help define goals and determine whether or not they can be achieved. A team’s ability to estimate accurately doesn’t define success; but how you deal with those estimates does. Estimating is hard work, and even the best teams will have trouble getting it right. So, when a team is asked to commit to…

3 Tips For Delivering Constructive Criticism That Leaves People Feeling Valued And Inspired — Giving effective feedback is critical to strong leadership. But it’s hard to give negative feedback without leaving someone feeling like you think they’re not good enough, or that you don’t trust their ability to do their job. If you want to make sure your direct reports are always at their…