This is the first in a monthly series prompted by Sparkbox, to start more meaningful conversations about our web industry. A new topic is announced the first Monday of every month, and on the last Friday of the month, everyone taking part in the monthly topic will post a link to their article with the hashtag #startYourShift. This month’s topic is “How to Make the Web Better”. I almost didn’t write this—I put it off while making myself busy with client projects and meetings, but I kept coming back to this thought of making the web better. I’ve been loudly grumping to the general public the last few years about keeping our clients and backend users in mind when building…
I recently wrote a post detailing the process I went through to create a retrospective plan for a non-agile team. Several DPM friends of mine were kind enough to contribute many resources, ideas, and advice towards my questions. Here’s a list of all of the resources I used, below. Thank you to Holly Davis, Larissa Scordato, Rachel Gertz, Patrice Embry, and Carson Pierce. Begin the meeting Retromat Idea Generator During the meeting Working Wall 7 Step Agenda for an Effective Retrospective General resources and articles Blameless Post-Mortems at Etsy The Art of the Retrospective Retrospectives at White October After the retrospective Retrospective of Retrospectives
A few months ago I was messy-bun-deep into a web project that was consuming all of myself and my team’s time, energy, and resolve. The project was tough for a number of reasons (actually, all of the possible reasons) and led to a lot of emotional highs and lows for everyone involved, as well as a good amount of frustration. Luckily, I was working with an amazing team. Our collective frustration led to long talks while venting, but also talking through processes and analyzing the avenues that had brought us to where we were. I knew as we worked through the project that we shouldn’t walk away from these discussions once the project launched. Having worked with other teams using…
I’ve signed up for a number of premium accounts over the year for productivity apps and trackers—part of the semi-realistic appeal of an ‘organized self’ that I strive for as a project manager but never quite attain. I thought I’d try to make something of it this year, as well as data from all of the apps I use to track things like my steps, books I’ve read, music, and more. This was my first full year of freelancing and working from home, and I hit some big milestones for myself as the months went by: April-May 2015 – went to 2 conferences (shout-out to #CreateUpstate and #PeersConf!) and took my first full vacation since I’ve started working for myself (actually,…