These are very good - and clearly stated.

Yeah, that. See also 'drawing is thinking' - drawing exposes the paragraphs I left out of paragraphs I wrote. I've been writing documentation recently and boy, that properly forces you to think about how to describe the thing you're doing.

I've read this post a few times, and it's still making me think. Lots of wisdom bound up in it, lots of things to aim for. Well done, Kellan.

"...an unfailingly kind leadership protocol seems like a solid approach for a volunteer organization. You don’t hire your team and they likely come from a diverse backgrounds, so your ability to explain and guide is key. Your ability to convey credibility and be the expert as quickly as possible is paramount because volunteers leave… randomly. This makes the final trait essential: in the face of disaster, you remain the calm and focused leader. Disaster is a strong word, but in a world where volunteers are doing work they are choosing to do rather than work they must do, unexpected situations are the norm.

...Leadership is an outfit you choose for others to see and I choose unfailingly kind." Michael Lopp on management culture as perceived through Destiny, of all things. I particularly liked 'an outfit you choose for others to see'.

"Reply to an evening email reminder with what you did that day. The next day, get a digest with what everyone on the team got done." As a management style, I like that.

"There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets." On knuckling down when faced with threats. (via Matt W)

"You can control time when you can see it." Things I like here: half-day resolution; tracking time as a group, rather than solo activity; the value of projects that may be numerically "over budget". Meetings as "0" is interesting; I'm not sure about that yet.

Lots of good analysis and tips in here. It's very much not a selection of things to do, more a selection of issues noticed and ways to fix them - many of which are contradictory.

"One thing that I learned during the launch of the original Macintosh in 1984 was that the press usually oversimplifies everything, and it can't deal with the reality that there are many people playing critical roles on significant projects. A few people always get too much credit, while most people get too little, that's just the way it has always worked. But luckily, it's 2011 and I can use the service that I helped to create to clarify things." This is Good And Proper. (Also it's good management).

'"The expectation is slightly weird here, that you can do this stuff without killing yourself," added McNamara. "Well, you can't, whether it's in London or New York or wherever; you're competing against the best people in the world at what they do, and you just have to be prepared to do what you have to do to compete against those people."'

This is what McNamara considers responding to controversy. I'm furious that men like this are allowed to manage other human beings.

"I'm imagining that Curling is project management: sweeping in front of the stone to both clear a path and influence the direction, but without touching it; a good curling strategy is to both knock the competition out of the way and get closer to the target, sometimes with different stones; ...plus you can drink and smoke while you play"

"In business, words are like fashion. You try a word on because important people around you are saying it and getting results, but you may not actually know what it means." Rands helps you discover what the words actually mean. As usual, he is right.

"William Petersen as Gil Grissom, David Caruso as Horatio Caine, Gary Sinese as Mac Taylor, Mark Harmon as Jethro Gibbs, Anthony LaPaglia as Jack Malone. These guys are the franchise players of primetime TV. But they are also role models. Each represents a different management style." I'd work for Grissom instead of Gibbs in a flash, personally, but I'm an eccentric and I like eccentric managers.

"There was a point a few years ago whenever somebody called a meeting that I had to attend, then whoever called the meeting had to pay me a dollar. And I got a lot of dollars that way. It did make them think twice about calling the meeting, even though it was only a dollar." Will Wright has a good point.

"In the case of European Air War, what management wanted was a very cool game to sell that customers would love. What the lead programmer did was present it to them so that they could see, clearly, that this was exactly what they had on their hands already. They, too, were having trouble digging through all those details and seeing the big picture." Lovely story about the importance of presentation on any kind of project.

"An obsessive meeting schedule is an investment in the boring, but by defining a specific place for the boring to exist, you’re allowing every other moment to have creative potential. You’re encouraging the random and random is how you’re going to win. Random is how you’re going to discover a path through a problem that one else has found and that starts with breathing deeply." Oh. That's an interesting way of looking at it.

"With limited influence, unlimited hands in the pie, a low barrier to critique, and the perception of triviality, frontend engineers are the janitors of software development. Rather than cleaning up trash, the boulder they toil beneath is skew: the distance between team member's conceptions of a project." This really feels very familiar: it's the most under-appreciated art in the stack of software development, and the one that takes the brunt of the crap.

"Looking in, it’s clear that the game industry is broken and not getting fixed anytime soon. I will not be joining the game industry. I’m interested in building a profitable business making fun games in a good working environment, and that’s simply not what it does. Maybe I could hoist one more flag in the indie games parade, but I think of myself as building a Micro-ISV in the web software business. It’s a much nicer community." As usual: anyone with a degree of sanity looking in from the outside comes to the same conclusions.

"CRM training encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills and attitudes including communications, situational awareness, problem solving, decision making, and teamwork; together with all the attendant sub-disciplines which each of these areas entails. CRM can be defined as a management system which makes optimum use of all available resources - equipment, procedures and people - to promote safety and enhance the efficiency of flight operations."

This appears to be some kind of 3D-tinged mind-mapping software; Flatblack were behind the rotoscoped look of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly; this is clearly an interesting digression for them.

"Just remember, 'There’s only us.'" Some good analysis; fair and even-handed.

...and then a massive anonymous slagging-match and name-calling session begins in the comments. Some reasonable commentary in amongst a lot of mud-slinging about the state of EALA...

"Take the hassle out of organising football". It's been done before, but perhaps the brand, mobile experience, and quality of product will win out for Nike's team-management app. They showed us the MMO with Nike+; now they're doing guild management for the masses.

"Of course, to get the most points, your band needs a bassist. And nobody wants to play bass. So if you want to lead a full band, you're going to have to play bass yourself. And this is like life!" Lovely article from Torpex' Jamie Fristrom.

"...for software developers, it's moronic. Your software isn't being released in theaters, it's available over the Web. You don't have to worry about the theater no longer showing after week one; you can keep pushing it for years, growing your userbase."

"Just as the words consumer and user are condesending to people, the word experience is condesending to the activity of people, or life. And it’s condescending to the people who work hard to create the products and services. Everyone seems to be an experience manager these days, but we should be proud of what we do." When Heathcote blogs, he blogs big. Great post.

"The idea of there being these two separate things has to be forced away from our thinking. They are one team, which produce one product. Stick their desks together and see what happens." Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

"an alternative way to represent time schedule tracking by stacking different lengths of Lego blocks as a way to convey different sequential time periods. stacking hourly rows on top of each other builds up the whole day, while color represents the different projects at hand. a whole week of time tracking is created by setting up a series of rainbow-colored days." Awesome.

I like some of Lipo's design ideas - Pillar Values, Pillar Verbs - but I'm not convinced by the examples he uses; I always get scared of this development-by-list idea. Still, more on focus on limitations, and the "resources without meaning" point is good.

"CKAN is the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, a registry of open knowledge packages and projects (and a few closed ones). CKAN is the place to search for open knowledge resources as well as register your own."

"I’ve reproduced the list [of rules from Lockheed’s Skunk Works] here with an identification of a modern software development rule or business practice that it corresponds to." Good stuff from Matt J. Can't wait to see his book.

"...they need to keep thinking creatively about how they work together and continuously try to improve their process. This mindset is the key to high performing, self-organizing teams."

"Every day, we have our team meeting and on one of the walls is a white board containing the heading 'Scary List'. When someone catches whiff of a problem or rumor that could potentially sink the projects, we jot it on the list."

If you're using Lightroom to manage your photos, you are probably serious about your photographs. [...] if you are indeed serious, then practicing good color management is essential.

"A Walking Skeleton is a tiny implementation of the system that performs a small end-to-end function. It ... should link together the main architectural components. The architecture and the functionality can then evolve in parallel."

"Thom's Quick & Dirty Guide to Color Management: 99% of what you need to know in 1% of the space."

"Pulse is a web-based cash flow management tool that allows you to easily monitor the heartbeat of your small business - your cash." Has Basecamp integration, too.

"Software is everything. It also sucks." Fascinating article on remedying that idea, about the team that writes software for the Space Shuttle. It's practically the polar opposite of web development. Some bits of that are probably good; some are perhaps n

"...a user interface design conceived by someone without detailed understanding of the tools used to construct it often suggests good, but expensive to implement designs. There's a sweet-spot between good, and expensive to build..."

"If you can't tell how long a piece of code would take when you have the finished product available, what chance do you think you have before the first line of code is written?" If only I could show this article to so many of my old directors.

"The challenge is to create the openness needed for good ideas to surface, while simultaneously cultivating the feedback and criticism necessary to resolve open issues." Tell me about it.

IN UR JOB LIVIN UR LIFE

"Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development." This, and many more gems, can be found in this Scott Berkun blogpost.

A wicked problem is one for which each attempt to create a solution changes the understanding of the problem.

Rands has a book. It looks very good.

Cha-Ching is a fun and easy to use money manager, with a slick interface that uses advanced functionality built into OS X.

Some really good explanations of the Lightroom colour-space issues.

A few things in here I've not seen before; worth a bookmark.

How 'done' something looks should match how 'done' something is.

"the length of time that priorities can go unchanged is a factor in selecting the iteration length."

All too true. Although, let's face it, it may as well be "developers" in the hole.

'Functional specifications document are "yes documents." They’re political. They’re all about getting to "yes" and we think the goal up front should be getting to "no."' ...which ties nicely into "make mistakes early and often".

"Are smart people overrated?"

Agile Work consists of seven core practices. These practices form a solid starting point for any person, team or community that wishes to follow the Middle Way to Excellence.

The team, and even the immediate layer above the team may be following Agile practices, but once it reaches out into the rest of the organization, leakage occurs in both directions: development needs frequent input from the field on what's valuable to imp

Building companies from the ground. Really good writing.

Joel on good form; essentially, why managers do everything in their power to let hackers hack.

Lovely business 2.0 piece, about a GE plant that builds jet engines where teams manage themselves, and all answer to one "boss". Interesting methodologies at work.