Techniques and comments on managing engineers

IT Shortage

Category: Hamstaa!, Management
Published on September 28, 2007 by

Last week I went to the QUT Dean's Industry Working Breakfast and again it was commented that the challenge for ICT in Australia is attracting students to study IT at uni.

Interestingly, the ABC news last week also featured an article, "Research shows IT worker shortage looms" that also raised the looming shortage of ICT professionals.

As someone responsible for recruitment for the Engineering team at Ephox this concerns me when I look to how I grow the team locally. As an Australian this also concerns me if Australia is to continue to compete on the world stage in ICT, something I believe we are well suited for.

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Hiring Capable People

Category: Management
Published on August 27, 2007 by

A few posts ago I talked about competency versus capability and recently I've seen a few posts supporting my assertion that the "tick in the box" approach to hiring isn't going to guarantee you get capable people.

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People Independence and the Atomic Test

Category: Agile, Management
Published on July 27, 2007 by

You will often hear the terms "People Independence" or "Institutional Memory" used as a management reason for the creation of the huge volumes of paperwork often created in a BDUF (Big Design Up Front) project. The idea of course is that the presence of the documentation allows the organisation to use developers interchangeably.

For developers, documentation is extremely useful for the those who come after, even if it's you in 12 months time. This documentation however is only useful if it's up-to-date. Unfortunately in most cases it's written, read and never looked at again.

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Leadership Course – “Public Speaking”

Category: Management
Published on July 17, 2007 by

Continuing the "Growing Team Leaders" course, last week Greg Stockwell of Public Speaking Australia presented "Public Speaking and Presentation Skills".

Unlike the previous sessions, this session was presented as a series of exercises where Greg introduced a few simple techniques for dealing with the obvious nerves of speaking. Interestingly when you hear people say they don't get nervous when speaking, this can sometimes mean they are overconfident. This overconfidence comes across to the audience as disingenuous.

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Recruitment Brand

Category: Management
Published on June 29, 2007 by

Yesterday I had the opportunity to hear Alan Noble, Engineering Director for Google Australia/New Zealand present on how they are tackling Google's expansion. While there were many interesting facts (for example, Google receives 12 resumes every second) and insights (like Google's approach to products, "Build it and see if people use it"), the one that I found interesting is regarding Branding.

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