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Amplifying Your Effectiveness: Collected Essays

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Articles on people oriented issues in Software development
Recommended for your project-management shelf.
Effective ways to effectively be more effective

Amplifying Your Effectiveness: Collected Essays

Manufacturer: Dorset House Publishing Company, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0932633471

Book Description

Gerald M. Weinberg, James Bach, Naomi Karten, and a group of successful software consultants present powerful ideas on how software engineers and managers can amplify their professional effectiveness -- as individuals, as members of teams, and as members of organizations.

The collected essays address diverse topics in personal empowerment, interpersonal interaction, mastering projects, and changing the organization. Contributors include James Bach, Marie Benesh, Rick Brenner, Esther Derby, Kevin Fjelsted, Don Gray, Naomi Karten, Bob King, Pat Medvick, Brian Pioreck, Ken Roberts, Sharon Marsh Roberts, Johanna Rothman, Steve Smith, Eileen Strider, Gerald M. Weinberg, and Becky Winant.

The idea for this collection arose out of a brainstorming session for the Amplifying Your Effectiveness Conference (AYE), which debuted on November 6-8, 2000, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Like the book, the annual conference is designed to help technical people become more effective individually, within a team, and within an organization. The contributing authors served as hosts of the inaugural AYE Conference.The variety of techniques and perspectives represented in the book will help you amplify your effectiveness -- whether or not you are able to attend the live event.

Customer Reviews:

Articles on people oriented issues in Software development.......2004-07-19

This slim text (146 pages) is a collection of 19 brief articles concerned with the people aspects of software development.

The essays are divided into 4 parts with common themes.
1. Empowering the individual
2. Improving Interpersonal Interactions
3. Mastering Projects
4. Changing the Organization.

There are 17 different contributors -- mostly consultants, whose names are familiar from magazine contributions and software conferences. Their views are diverse and the writing is uneven.
I've always appreciated James Bach's writings which questioned conventional thinking on software testing and software QA. I also found Becky Winant's essay on "Maneuvers to Disable a Team" humorous.

Recommended for your project-management shelf........2000-10-31

In the preface, the editor explains that this collection of essays arose from a "brainstorming session for a conference of the same name." As you'd expect with over a dozen authors, the results are uneven. If you're involved in software development, the following chapters will justify your purchase of the book:

- Don Gray: "Solving Other People's Problems"

- S.M. & K. Roberts: "Do I want to Take This Crunch Project?"

- Gerald Weinberg: "Congruent Interviewing by Audition"

- Johanna Rothman: "It's Just the First Slip"

Although the critical reader may find some other sections offering commonplace or occasional misguided advice, the whole book is stimulating and easy to read in one sitting. Recommended for your project-management shelf.

Effective ways to effectively be more effective.......2000-10-29

Since it is not possible to extend the length of the day, the only hope to improve your efficiency is to improve what you do with this most limited of resources. Working extended overtime has proven to be a short term solution only, as with few exceptions extended overtime leads to a general drop in productivity. The only situation where extended overtime does not appear to be a self-defeating condition is when the work is challenging enough so that it becomes a legitimate combination of livelihood, hobby and recreation. Tall order indeed!
However, the situation is not impossible if you simply take the time to explore the ways in which you can save time. The first and foremost way is to reduce the number of simultaneous projects. Study after study has demonstrated that the term momentary distraction is a gross misnomer. Any interruption takes us off task for at least ten minutes and the best essay in this book describes the plight of a man named Sam. Overseeing several projects that would each individually take only a few weeks, the constant switching created a near deadlock state in his managerial life. The simple solution is to declare one the highest priority and concentrate on it alone until it was complete. Repeating this simple process removed the deadlock and all projects were completed in a short time.
The simplest way that work can be made fun is to make the surrounding interpersonal interactions pleasant. The most interesting work in the world will not make a job fun if the interpersonal atmosphere is poisonous. This involves both selecting the right people as well as helping them enjoy each other through the emotional ups and downs of the long haul of building a major project. In my experience conducting technical interviews, the advice here of having candidates audition is the right way to select the people you want. If someone cannot handle the auditioning of their supposed skills, then it is difficult to see how they can survive the pressure of working closely and intensely with others for months at a time. The second and by far the most difficult is how to walk the fine line of allowing for individual differences without letting the differences become too individual. The advice here is good, but one could write volumes on how to practice this critical art.
As a group, IT workers commonly work 50-60 hour weeks filled with "crisis" after "crisis." The only hope to break this destructive cycle is to either cut the hours or make them more fun, and there is sound advice in this book that will help you do both.

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