Great teams will always be cherished

I have worked on over 10 projects in the last 6 and half years of my career. Sometimes when I look back at them, I cherish the projects which gave me an opportunity to work with a great team, much more than the one where we delivered 2 months ahead of schedule.

A team which worked on a Malpractice Insurance application (2004), and another one building a Leasing application (2006) clearly stand out of all the other teams. In fact one of the teams I work in currently is a close next, and that is probably the reason for this train of thought.

The team dynamics is so great in these teams which immediately allows for a lot of innovative thinking and high performance, since the team would have already got its basics right. It is very tempting to retain these teams as is, and do another assignment, but working in a big organization does not always give you this luxury.

It is difficult to put in words what makes a team great, but I will make an attempt in a later post.

(Note to self -> So strive to build a great team, it is probably what you will remember and cherish for years.)

A must read for wannabe Agile PMs

I am usually quite skeptical about management books, especially the ones that provide general management gyan.

But this book, Manage It, is one I would highly recommend, for wannabe Agile PMs who are making their move from using other methodologies to Agile. It is also a great resource for a Dev/QA/BA wanting to try out Project Management.

The thing I like about this book is that the language used is simple, the author is blunt and to the point. The book gets the juice out of timeless classics (eg: Mythical man month, Code Complete, Agile Estimation and Planning, Peopleware etc..) and puts it into one complete Software Project Management book. There is also no need to read it chapter to chapter, just read what interests you and I am sure you would find a lot interesting in the contents.