Management

I Love Cowboy Coding, But I Don’t Run Wild West Teams

March 2, 2010 Management

I love being a cowboy coder. It feels great. Just the thought of dreaming up a new feature, coding late into the night, and unveiling it to the astonishment of the rest of my team makes my heart beat a little faster. I love it so much that I once joined a company made up [...]

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3 Hours of Real-Time Communication Is Magic

December 8, 2009 Management

If you’re interested in Firefox you might want to tune in to air.mozilla.com on a Monday at 10:00 AM Pacific time. You can watch Mozilla’s weekly all company staff meeting. Mozilla employees and volunteers work from all over the world. When it’s 10:00 AM in California, what time is it for other Mozilla engineers? Mountain [...]

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Don’t Make Your Team Work In The Dark

November 17, 2009 Management

Let’s pretend you’re a director at a large company. Two of your teams are delivering projects at around the same time. Your first team starts a mailing list and puts you on it. The list is pretty active and you can’t read all the mail, but from what you see the team spends a lot [...]

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Telework Programs Save Millions

November 5, 2009 Management

There’s a lot of confusion about how much telecommuting costs. Let me make it clear, telecommuting saves money. Companies save money by not paying real estate costs. They save on desks, chairs, Internet connections, cubicle walls, and everything else it takes to work in an office. Teleworkers are also far more productive. They have more [...]

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4 Rules For Managing Telecommuting Teams

September 15, 2009 Management

Many managers see distributed teams as a nightmare, but they are a blessing in disguise. They force you to do what you should be doing anyway. Take advantage of the remote status and build good team habits. Come together. Don’t let the team drift apart. You should always know what everyone is working on and [...]

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