Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Reviews – Articles”
Mahmoud et al. say that introductory programming courses have unacceptable failure rates, with “reported withdrawal, failure and D-grade rates approaching 50%”. In an interesting take on the problem, they decided to change they way they teach instead of complaining that the students had to change.
!["Bessemer converter (iron into steel) Allegheny Ludlum Steel e Corp Brackenridge, Pa (LOC)" [crop]. Ca. 1940. Alfred T. Palmer via Library of Congress](https://i0.wp.com/www.manasclerk.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/1a35063u-Bessemer-converter-iron-into-steel-Allegheny-Ludlum-Steel-e-Corp-Brackenridge-Pa-LOC-1600x995.jpg?fit=862%2C536&ssl=1)
Since IT projects are particularly prone to ignoring risk and escalation of commitment, reviewing some of the research on how we make decisions will benefit any IT manager or PM.
There is a large body of work dealing with the escalation of commitment in IT projects, how managers continue to throw good money after bad, increasing their commitment to a project that has little chance of succeeding. For example, Gustavo Dimello has an interesting summary (“To Pull or Not To Pull the Plug: When Managers Commit Themselves to Failure”) of …
Wouldn’t you know it? The last issue that I have coming to me before I was going to end my IEEE Computer Society membership and it had to be interesting. I’ve been reading Computer for several years now and I’ve gotten to the point where I just pass it on to some other IT schmuck without actually opening it. I …
The managers from a consulting firm I work with are sold on the “trusted advisor” idea. This comes from The Trusted Advisor by Charles Green, David Maister and Rob Galford (Free Press, 2000). They bantered this around in my friend’s performance review. I actually believe that trusted advisor ideas and “techniques” are solid, money-making and morally good. Unfortunately, I’m not …
Role playing (and no, we are not talking about a gaming session of Warhamster) has been shown to greatly increase forecasting accuracy, yet it has a pretty bad reputation with the academy. Probably because it does not have a theoretical or mathematical background to it, but more of a three-year old feel
It’s not a question of whether to spend or not spend.
It’s about what really matters.
It’s the people, people.
I’ve never agreed with anyone who says that “People are our greatest resource” because: 1) if you have to remind us it probably isn’t true and 2) I resent being the equivalent of a printer.
“We need to get these people on board” when people really mean to say “We need to coerce these people into doing what we want rather than what they want.”
Again and again we see that customers want trust and trust comes from a relationship with an individual, which then accrues to the corporation.
They were more likely to provide their tacit knowledge over chat when I had shown a personal interest.
