Tag: management

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Creating an Employee Performance Review and Feedback Workflow

Resilience is my number 1 hiring trait.  As a manager, you will have ups and downs with your employees, and your feedback should reflect this. It's not about harshness or power play, mind you. Receiving critical feedback may be absolutely devastating for juniors and many introverts.  However, your options are very limited and you don’t want to do any of the following that might only jeopardize the entire company: Stick to praising (missing out on improvements) Prolong tough times until it becomes unbearable Sugar-coat problems Look for a replacement because a civilized conversation is unlikely Deliver feedback and receive a… Continue Reading
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5 Reasons Why Multitasking Actually Works (And Supplements Focus Mode)

Multitasking is a habit of many people who want to get many things done at a time.  More specifically, according to the American Psychology Association, multitasking is done by performing at least two tasks simultaneously, switching from one task to another, and working on two or more tasks speedily. But, it is easy to get distracted, tap into your favorite social media, watch YouTube videos, get on the phone with a colleague or a friend, and forget about the core tasks you were supposed to work on. These distractions can negatively affect your focus, meaning that the quality of your… Continue Reading
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Onboarding Best Practices That Every Business Should Use

Onboarding new employees is an essential part of the recruitment process. Skipping this requirement can backfire big time.  But here's the thing: onboarding a new hire takes months until reaching efficiency. Hiring the wrong fit is often a 5-figure investment (and past $100K for some roles), considering mentorship, training, and involving other team members and management in the process. Onboarding Is Crucial To Reduce Hiring Costs Since hiring is so expensive, it's approached carefully. I try to simplify the recruitment process by hiring motivated people eager to solve problems, avoid cultural misalignments (and a toxic environment), and ensure everyone can… Continue Reading
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The Practical Guide to Hiring Employees

Hiring new employees is among the biggest problems businesses face. From micro businesses to large enterprises, finding and closing top talent is a major challenge that we're all eager to overcome. Hiring Employees With Qualified Talent Having led over a thousand interviews, I’ve faced challenges with almost every role I looked for in IT. Software engineers — needless to say, companies are competing for top talent in engineering, not the other way around. Resources are scarce and companies keep growing, therefore demand is through the roof. As an extra challenge, top engineers often switch to management/training, open their own companies,… Continue Reading
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7 Reasons Why It is Difficult to Manage New Projects (Or Inherit an Old One)

What makes projects so difficult to manage? As a project manager, you need to assess the culture, your role, your team, how problems escalate, what your responsibilities are and how to tackle edge cases (delays, problematic team members, running out of budget, handling scope creep, disagreeing with a client, etc.) And within the right environment, everyone follows the company mission statement and the core principles of the organization. This will turn your decision-making process into a quantifiable, well-oiled machine, which should facilitate the team and get the work done. Project management is, in theory, the activity of ensuring a project’s… Continue Reading
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Strategies In Managing A Software Development Team

Prior to launching my own web development agencies over 10 years ago, I’ve jumped between the role of a senior developer and a manager multiple times – including leading and managing a software development team role. My first stunt in management was back in 2007. We were building a Java-based distributed software for a telecom group operating in multiple countries. I spent a year and a half with the company as a developer before joining the project along with our Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and a couple of other developers. The CTO and I spent several months working closely together… Continue Reading
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The Business Guide to Intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurship, credit: TechCharge With the boom of entrepreneurship out there, there has been a distinct separation between corporate work and starting a business of your own. However, most folks are not familiar with what intrapreneurship is, due to it getting far less coverage than it should be. What Is An Intrapreneur? As Murray Newlands shared for Inc.: The distinction between entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs can be seen as a difference in the level of focus. While an entrepreneur should see the company as a vision from starting point to end; the intrapreneur is a facet of this broader vision. The intrapreneur… Continue Reading
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The 38 Biggest Business Challenges Growing Companies Face

Growing a business is complicated. According to SBE Council, 89% of all businesses employ fewer than 20 employees. And scaling a company further is contingent on solving a number of business challenges -- most of those being common across all organizations out there. Businesses in their first year or two, under 10 to 20 employees, and making less than $500,000 in revenue are still validating their business model. Once a certain sense of stability is met, several repetitive challenges keep haunting organizations, over and over again. [optin-monster-shortcode id="bvo0dmszdzz4j6ua2ljr"] This is why I've compiled this comprehensive list of the most impactful… Continue Reading
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QA != Tester

Last Saturday I had one of those epiphany moments for something way too obvious, still too shocking for me at the moment of speaking. It was related to the QA process and the place of the QA role in the software industry. I got involved in a discussion on Saturday evening regarding several different technical specialties. There were three of us teaching classes at the Telerik Academy here. Trainees could end up as: developers, frontend engineers, support experts, QA guys etc. Not surprisingly for me, most people tend to lean towards the development department, i.e. trying to join the dev… Continue Reading
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14 Common Misconceptions About Email – Gmail’s Toolkit

"Slack is Killing email", "5 reasons Slack will change the workplace", "Slack, the office messaging app that may finally sink e-mail". For some odd reason, the media is eager to bury down the idea of email, and put an end to its usage for the entire world. Whether it's Slack, HipChat, Skype, social network, or some project management tool, media outlets are impatient to sink email as an official method of communication. In the meantime, marketers are celebrating their success with the best ROI results for email: According to GetResponse, email's ROI is $41 per dollar spend: Email remains unbeaten, with ROI… Continue Reading