GeekMBA360

Career and Money Advice At The Intersection Of Business And Technology

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Entries Tagged as 'Get Project Done'

Are you doing "usability design" or "market research" in your head?

December 3rd, 2008 · No Comments

"I’m the usability guru. I have been doing this for the last 8 years. I’ve been reading a lot of books in usability and taking classes. I know what users want. You business people shouldn’t question my judgment". The UI designer in my company was quite upset as several business folks were criticizing his design. […]

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Tags: Get Project Done · Start-up Success

Scrum mania

December 2nd, 2008 · 1 Comment

There was a scrum mania around me. The software development team had been missing deadlines and producing buggy code. The business team felt frustrated because they were not getting the features they wanted to market and sell. Let’s implement SCRUM! Let’s be iterative and get things out quickly! The company sent a few program managers […]

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Tags: Get Project Done · Product Management

The New Product Manager: How to work effectively with engineering team

November 15th, 2008 · 5 Comments

Write detailed, thorough product requirements. Be consistent — some product managers change their mind a lot. As a result, engineering has to change what they just implemented. Unless there is some strong reason to change the requirement, you should try to stick to what you propose initially, and be consistent. It will save engineering a […]

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Tags: Career Transition · Get Project Done · Product Management

Deal with "internalized conflict"

November 14th, 2008 · No Comments

As a product manager, I often find myself internalizing conflict: sales team wants development team to build a new feature or customize an existing feature so that they can close a deal. Engineering team has its own schedule and resource constraints. They don’t like to be distracted by the one-off request. Plus, sales tend to […]

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Tags: Career Fast Track · Get Project Done · Product Management

How to work effectively with international teams while maintaining life/work balance

September 5th, 2008 · 1 Comment

My friend’s Facebook Updates: "Tim is so tired. Mid-night." "Tim is getting ready for a meeting with India development team. 10:52pm" "Tim just finished a call with Japan team. 9:00PM" "Tim is having another a meeting with EU team. 7:30AM" Tim is a product manager at a large enterprise software company in the Silicon Valley. […]

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Tags: Career Fast Track · Get Project Done · Product Management · Work/Life Balance

The "4 Basic Things" to turn around your project and get project done

August 20th, 2008 · No Comments

"Your team has delivered more projects in one year than what this team had done in the previous 7 years!" — from my performance review at one of the largest Internet companies. I got a lot of questions about my "secrets" to turn around the team and get projects done. It’s very simple. I set […]

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Tags: Get Project Done