review of publications for the week
Colleagues from Product Lab – about the main roles of Scrum (Product Owner, Scrum master, Development team) – with examples and details.
Introduction to the Waterfall Model
Yes, suddenly it also needs to be studied – Waterfall is still in demand and popular. This material is of an introductory nature, describing the advantages and disadvantages of the approach, the current state (who needs it and for what).
Save time and money: how prototyping helps digital product development
A solid text with good examples about MVPs and prototypes, from the basics to implementation tools.
Metrics that really matter
Product-project metrics – main features and applications. Focus – North star, business metrics (CAC, CLTV, MRR, Churn [отток]), product usage metrics (NPS, CSAT).
Brainstorm. Why does business really need it?
The method itself needs no introduction, but its effectiveness is a big question.
The Scrumtrek team talks about the effectiveness of brainstorming, the role of facilitation in them, and the main techniques for conducting them.
Project Manager Skills, Tools and Careers
The material is controversial, but useful. First, it's a good idea to understand what questions managers and HR will ask during interviews; secondly, you can understand what questions candidates will prepare for; thirdly, we can come to the conclusion that all these questions are nothing more than one of the selection tools, and far from being decisive.
A good manager is a dead manager!
Text from Vladimir Zavertailov (Sibirix) – about how not to become a punishment for your team and, ultimately, for yourself. Many managers are passionate about customer focus – and in an effort to help the client right now and against all odds, they destroy the team, force specialists to change their productive schedule to “force majeure,” etc. The author argues against this, and if this is the kind of manager who “roots for the client,” then the text is for you!
Why is it better to hire a Project Manager from technical specialists than a manager from the street?
A little provocative material that cannot but be included in this collection. The position of the authors is that it is better to have your own techie, who is well acquainted with the project and product, than to be an outside humanities specialist who can easily mess things up. In the comments to the article – arguments in favor of the opposite)
What will help the leader: hand-to-hand combat, silver bullets, a trap?
A little theory, a little case studies, a little water, but in general – about the figure of the “leader”, his tools and role in the team. Emphasis on time management, goal setting, communications, and subject matter expertise.
Triangle of company organizational structures. Part 2 Examples of the organizational structure of a project office
Large and complex material about the construction and decomposition of an organizational structure. Using the example of a project office, the author examines functional, process, matrix and various hybrid structures.
Why I no longer do important things: and 3 more rules on how not to lose yourself by the age of 40
Yes, not directly about projects, but the ideas themselves are interesting, debatable and applicable. Briefly: chasing success and a “mark in history”, sacrificing yourself and loved ones, is doubtful. Life is short, you need to focus on a narrow range of professional issues and not be distracted by the rest. At the same time, the chosen cases can also be gigantic, and for this you need to develop decomposition skills. Not only the article itself is interesting (yes, it is quite banal), but also the comments to it – take a look.
Open tools for business analytics – when you need to build dashboards and work with streaming data
MTS post about business analysis tools, including those mentioned – Perspective (visualization of big and streaming data), Quary (platform for data modeling and query building), Redash (data merging and diagrams), Evidence, OpenRefine and others.
Which requirements management system to choose: overview of tools
Yes, many lead to Jira and Confluence (and similar), but there are also specialized tools. The authors systematically approached the issue and analyzed a dozen and a half different services and platforms according to a list of indicators. The leaders are Jama, Visure, ReqView, as well as Russian DevProm and Tekhekspert.
10 ChatGPT Prompt Templates to Help You in Project Management
How to use AI at work if you are not a text writer: first steps
4 Steps to AI Power User: How to Become an Advanced ChatGPT User
As many as three informative publications about AI for project managers (and not only). The first is the actual prompts, from planning and scheduling to finding motivation for the team. The other two are a fundamental approach to the topic, a detailed and popular guide to working with ChatGPT, which managers are using in their work more and more often. There are many examples of “correct” work with AI, which will make it not just entertainment, but almost a full-fledged assistant.
The project team
Distracting programmers from work is much worse than it seems at first glance
Translated material about deep work (concentrated work) VS work without concentration in the context of team interaction. The number of meetings is growing, employees are forced to deal with several things at once, hence the problems – the share of deep work is falling, there is no flow, which means everyone is working slower and worse. In addition to criticism, the article also contains very specific recommendations for changing the culture of meetings in a company/team, as well as tips for developing the skill of immersion in work.
How to streamline team work using visualization
Sber talks about his secret techniques for useful visualization. Briefly: in a situation when you need to form a vision and understanding of the project among all participants, you need to visualize the tasks, then, “standing at the board,” agree on what to do first, mark those points where team losses are visible, and generally record on such a board all stages of work on the project.
Retro can be different, sometimes in an unusual format and for no apparent reason – and colleagues decided to reveal the recipe for the perfect retro. Aspects covered: preparation (and its phases), stages, tools (Metro Retro and ClickUp), frequency, impact on productivity (very positive!), retro examples.
What does an IT architect do: fantasies of colleagues and harsh reality
Another text from MTS, in which the author laments that even in large and complex teams, the role of the architect remains unclear. Typical myths: an architect is a technician; the architect is an analyst; the architect does not code, which means he does not have the right to solve problems; the architect should not worry about what kind of data the system will be filled with. All this, the author writes, is completely wrong – and step by step determines what an architect should do in a company and how to correctly form the necessary understanding of his work in a team.
Who is an IT architect and how is it different from a line engineer?
Suddenly, once again about the architect, but from the other side. Allegedly, there are many vacancies for architects, and all of them are more likely to be about engineers. The author believes that the main difference between an architect and an engineer is the ability to independently analyze the situation, predict data/scenarios and propose a reasonable solution to the problem. The position is not very transparent and obvious.
Stress-free onboarding. Why Buddy and Mentors in IT
Screening: how to (im)onboard correctly so that your employees run away from you as quickly as possible
Two materials about onboarding. In the first, a bank shares its practice when it was faced with a terrible figure – 26% of IT specialists hired for a probationary period failed. The culture of “mentors” (helpers at a higher level) and “buddies” (helpers at the same level as the newcomer) helped. See the publication for details, but overall it seems to have helped – the outflow of new employees has halved over the year.
The second text contains the favorite genre of many authors, “bad advice”: do not introduce employees, do not give information, overload with work, do not give feedback, etc.
Experience and cases
Courage and bravery: how we got out of a complete paragraph with a non-working ERP in 39 productions
Again a case from OMK IT – and again an excellent text about the implementation of information systems (1C: ERP) at a manufacturing giant. If before that story was about a fall (they thought it would be possible to quickly implement the project, but that was not the case), then here is a positive story about overcoming problems. The emphasis is on working with people (and the team, and stakeholders, and users), on immersion in the subject area, on solving technical issues.
12 problems we encountered when implementing Service Desk: the victory of common sense over manual
LANIT Group – about the implementation of a service desk, problems and their solutions. In my opinion, very useful and honest material, useful for any project. Well, if you work with ITSM, then even more so.
Working according to the method: how methodologists facilitate IT development and speed up the introduction of new products to the market
The case of one G-bank about the allocation of a separate division (role, status) of methodologists in the company’s structure. They began to be responsible for the methodological basis of IT development, document, simplify and translate architectural patterns into human language, select best practices and scale them throughout the company, etc. The result is increased development productivity.
Test Driven Development in Embedded, or How to increase team productivity by 37%
Yandex about TDD, conditions for its use in a team and its impact on development performance indicators (speed, number of bugs, etc.).
How lean manufacturing and prince2 accelerated development by 1.5 times (longread)
A very detailed case of using lean and PRINCE2 on a project.
An interesting story about “pulling” Agile onto construction projects. It was difficult, but efficiency supposedly increased significantly both in communications and, most importantly, in the construction itself. Perhaps you currently live in an Agile apartment…
This was the week of publications about projects. If we suddenly missed any interesting material, share it in the comments.
Digest archives and new materials – Here (digests have been conducted weekly since the beginning of 2023).
