When you’re leading a project, do you plan every last detail? (e.g. “Guys, we will finish the prototype at approximately 12:15 pm on Tuesday with these features complete.”)  Or do you let everything finish “when it’s done?”  (i.e. “Hey, man, you can finish that whenever.  As long as I can ship it to the client [...]

I’ve gotten into a lot of conversations with fellow project managers about deadlines.  Should they be steadfast like a concrete pole or flexible like a reed in the wind? Personally, I’m torn. On the one hand, deadlines ensure that things get done, which is the name of the game in project management.  Even though I [...]

…don’t go the way we want them to. Case in point, we here at Avalon Labs have been pushing to do a feature update to the Fellowstream closed beta for the last week.  We’ve burned some midnight oil, tested and re-tested our next batch of features, but it’s still not ready to go live.  For [...]

There’s never enough time in the day, and our task lists grow with no signs of slowing down. Lately, I’ve seen a lot of blog posts about how to manage your time better, and I thought I’d throw my top five into the ring: 1. Do your “routine” first thing in the morning and get [...]

So, are you managing? “I’m not a manager,” you might be thinking. People often don’t think about managing if they don’t have that title on their business cards.  But consider these management roles we all play: Upwards Management:  For most of us, there’s someone up the business food chain that is responsible for making sure [...]

You know the cliche “out of the box” thinking? Do you know what it means? It took me a while to figure this one out.  I always thought of “the box” as being a construct someone else had created for me – my teachers, my boss, my co-workers.  But when I met people who truly [...]

I am an extremely goal oriented person.  I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t working towards something.  As a 6-year-old I decided I wanted to be an actress and enlisted my sisters in 3-person, 1-act plays of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Hansel and Gretel. Today, the goals have become more sophisticated.  I [...]

Once upon a time, in 1804, Meriwether Lewis woke up on a cold winter morning and realized something was missing in his life.  As a child, he liked nature and hiking, and here he was, living in the heart of Washington D.C.  Certainly, he had more to offer his country than simply being a public [...]

I’ve talked a lot about self-managed teams in the past few weeks, and why you might want to use one.  The tricky part is self-managed teams just don’t run themselves. For those of you who just re-read that previous sentence a few times, let me clarify. I’ve defined a self-managed team as one that has [...]

In my last blog, I gave a brief introduction to self-managed teams.  Of course, not all teams should be structured entirely so that each individual manages both herself and the output of the team.  Imagine the chaos that would ensue if a surgeon did not direct nurses during a delicate surgery or if a coach [...]