project management
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How to Avoid or Remedy Technical DebtMany people have experienced monetary debt in their lives, and although technical debt isn't quite the same, it can be just as harmful. With technical debt, you aren't borrowing chunks of code with the promise to pay it back. Read more to learn about technical debt and how you can avoid and fix it. | 
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Handoffs Aren't Bad—Just Think of Cooks in the Kitchen Some people are confused by the word handoff. They think it means people have not done their jobs and other people had to cover for them. Sometimes that happens, but usually it's more like when one chef cooks his part of the meal, then hands off the plate to the next chef to finish the dish. |
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How Many People Should You Manage?As a manager, you should be providing a learning environment, coaching when it's wanted, and building trusting relationships. You should dedicate yourself to the employees, and you need time to meet with them often. This can be hard to do if you're managing too many people. What's the right number? |
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Optimism Bias: What It Means for You and Your BusinessThe idea behind the optimism bias is that people estimate their odds of a positive outcome as higher than average but their odds of a negative outcome as lower than average. This can be dangerous when forecasting the outcomes of risky projects. Learn to temper your optimism to avoid miscalculations. | 
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Reduce Your Work in Progress to Make Your Whole Team More ProductiveWhen you are a manager, you have to limit your own work in progress. If you don’t, you can’t pay attention to the most important work you have to do, which can affect your whole team. Read on for some tips about how best to manage work in progress, how transparency helps, and achieving efficiency. |
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Know Your Program: Which Team Are You Managing?Some program managers whose organizations are transitioning to agile are not always clear which program team they are managing. That can be because the organization doesn’t always realize it needs more than one program team. Here, Johanna Rothman describes some program teams and when to use them. |
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Why Open Source CM May Not Be As Cheap As You Might Have ThoughtJoe Farah writes that there’s a lot more to the cost of configuration management than licenses for version control and problem tracking, and all those open source CM tools out there may be a lot more costly than you might have thought. | 
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Beware of Vanity MetricsMetrics like recording the number of website visits or the number of downloads are called vanity metrics. Venkatesh Krishnamurthy writes how these metrics are misleading and how companies should start measuring actionable metrics instead. | 
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