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Curious Cat Management Improvement Library - New Additions

Role of the Manager in Scrum by Pete Deemer, Jan 2010
"- Provide input to the Product Owner on the product strategy and vision, and give feedback to the Product Owner on the content and prioritization of the Product Backlog. - Provide support and assistance to Teams and their ScrumMasters. Be prompt and proactive in helping remove impediments that are harming Teams' ability to be effective. - Actively support ScrumMasters' efforts to protect Teams from disturbance, disruption, or outside interference..."
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Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data by John Hunter, Aug 2004
"We use data to act as a proxy for some results of the system. Often people forget that the desired end result is not for the number to be improved but for the situation to be improved. We hope, if the measure improves the situation will have improved. But there are many reasons this may not be the case (one number improving at the expense of other parts of the system, the failure of the number to accurately serve as a proxy, distorting numbers, etc.)."
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The Trouble with Incentives: They Work by Gipsie B. Ranney, Jan 2010
"There may be cases in which incentives work only as intended, but I suspect they are relatively rare. The trouble is that we are usually dealing with complex systems (people and organizations) that may behave not at all like our myths would predict. The best policy may be to avoid incentives altogether and focus instead on creating systems in which intrinsic motivation, cooperation, ethical behavior, trust, creativity, and joy in work can flourish."
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A Hospital That Slashes Costs and Delivers High-quality Care by Catherine Arnst, Jan 2010
"High quality at a low price. Every other industry strives for that combination, but a hospital that does both is all too rare. Providence and its cost-efficient brethren demonstrate that quality care can be delivered at an affordable price, provided hospitals can be persuaded to rethink decades-old practices."
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The Unnatural Environment by H Thomas Johnson, Jan 2010
"Toyota's management culture at its zenith was process-driven, not results-driven. Toyota eschewed the financial markets' absurdly impossible demand to produce higher results quarter by quarter. It rejected the idea espoused by lean authorities that a company can improve its overall performance by subtracting parts... Its pathway to higher results echoed Deming's advice, given many years ago, to improve the capability of the process, not to demand that people meet higher targets."
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Test Smarter, Not Harder by Scott Sehlhorst , May 2006
"This is a much more manageable situation. Exhaustive coverage required us to use 2.3 million tests, where using N-wise testing with N=3, yields only 179 tests! Existing studies have consistently shown that N=3 creates on the order of 90% code coverage with test suites, although the number will vary from application to application. When we're testing any software, we are faced with the tradeoff of cost and benefit of testing. With complex software, the costs of testing can grow faster than the benefits of testing. If we apply techniques like the ones in this article, we can dramatically reduce the cost of testing our software. This is what we mean when we say test smarter, not harder."
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CMMI or Agile: Why Not Embrace Both! by David Anderson, Hillel Glazer et. al., Nov 2008
40 page report from the Software Engineering Institute. "The purpose of this report is to clarify why the discord need not exist and to ask for your help in making the software development community aware that, when properly used together, CMMI and Agile can dramatically improve performance... When viewed holistically, CMMI's ultimate goal (i.e., continuous process improvement) is to cause an organization to become less wasteful, leaner, and more in touch with actual development progress. Ultimately, both Agile and CMMI, especially in high-trust environments, expect organizations to see gains in productivity by eliminating unnecessary effort. It's true that implementing Agile methods will often eliminate many unproductive efforts and behaviors at the project level."
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Test for Actual Use, not Intended Use by Jamie Flinchbaugh, Dec 2009

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I Come to Bury Agile, Not to Praise It by Alistair Cockburn, Sep 2009
Webcast: "Agile came from small, colocated projects in the 1990s. It has spread to large, globally distributed commercial projects, affecting the IEEE, the PMI, the SEI and the Department of Defense. Agile now sits in a larger landscape and should be viewed accordingly. This talk shows that landscape, clarifying how classical agile fits in and what constitutes effective development outside that narrow area."
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Visualizing Agile Projects using Kanban Boards by Kenji Hiranabe, Aug 2007
"I'll discuss Kanban Boards as the main information radiators, and Burndown Charts and Parking lot Charts as sub-tool which summarize Kanbans visually... A project team consists of people working toward the same goal. Typically, a manager, customers, developers, business analysts, users, testers and other stakeholders should be members of the team. The whole team should share information on time and tasks to achieve the project goal..."
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Kanban Family Job Chart by Peter Abilla, Nov 2009
"Our family needs something that is visible, without equivocation, and shows the Person, Jobs, Day, and Status. So, we created a Kanban Family Job Chart ... We want, instead, to teach self-reliance, demonstrate our trust in the kids, and help them grow in their own terms, but with our loving guidance. We also have to make sure that the job is equal to the capability of the child their mental capacity, hand size, strength, etc."
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Keen to Be Lean by Josh Hyatt - CFO Magazine, Dec 2009
"Lean techniques have helped Denver Health's doctors see more patients - mainly by eliminating paperwork and rearranging offices so that the physicians don't have to do as much walking. In just one clinic, such moves have generated an extra $520,000 in revenue since 2007... Lean provides a lens through which companies can study different processes across various departments with the goal of reducing costs and improving quality... Burnette calculates that lean has saved Denver Health, which has a $750 million budget, a total of $28.6 million..."
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No More Executive Bonuses! by Henry Mintzberg, Nov 2009
"Don't pay any bonuses. Nothing. This may sound extreme. But when you look at the way the compensation game is played-and the assumptions that are made by those who want to reform it-you can come to no other conclusion. The system simply can't be fixed. Executive bonusesespecially in the form of stock and option grantsrepresent the most prominent form of legal corruption that has been undermining our large corporations and bringing down the global economy. Get rid of them and we will all be better off for it."
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The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals by Jason Fried, Nov 2009
"I spend another good portion of my day thinking about how to make things less complicated. In the software world, the first, second, and third versions of any product are really pretty good, because everyone can use them. Then companies start adding more and more stuff to keep their existing customers happy. But you end up dying with your customer base, because the software is too complicated for a newcomer. We keep our products simple. I'd rather have people grow out of our products, as long as more people are growing into them."
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How to Make Solving Problems Fun by Peter Bregman, Sep 2009
"Everything I've seen in organizations confirms a simple rule: people do what they choose to do. And if you want people to choose to do something, make it fun... Focus on real work problems and opportunities. A company picnic might be fun but it doesn't achieve the same impact. Instead, make the work itself fun. Money isn't fun. When Marc put a $1,000 bounty on a problem, it failed... Fun keeps people motivated, and that eventually translates into performance."
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How to Be an Effective Leader by Danny Meyer, Oct 2006
"Constant, gentle pressure is my preferred technique for leadership, guidance, and coaching. It's the job of any business owner to be clear about the company's nonnegotiable core values. They're the riverbanks that help guide us as we refine and improve on performance and excellence... Riverbanks need not hinder creativity, and in fact I leave plenty of room between the riverbanks for individual expression and personal style."
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Tips on Managing People by David Maister, Jan 2002
"The best group leaders see themselves as catalysts. They like to accomplish a great deal but understand that they can do little without the combined efforts of others. A good manager does not see himself as the 'people's boss' but as the leader of a cohesive team of autonomous, creative individuals."
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How I Hire Programmers by Aaron Swartz, Nov 2009
"If all that looks good and I'm ready to hire someone, there's a final sanity check to make sure I haven't been fooled somehow: I ask them to do part of the job. Usually this means picking some fairly separable piece we need and asking them to write it. (If you really insist on seeing someone working under pressure, give them a deadline.) If necessary, you can offer to pay them for the work, but I find most programmers don't mind being given a small task like this as long as they can open source the work when they're done."
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