10 Reasons Why Project Management is like Bartending

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the bartending project manager

 

10) Entering a food order into the POS is remarkably familiar to creating a ticket in Pivotal Tracker.

9) Showing a customer a food menu is just like showing a client your company’s portfolio page.

 

8) Letting a customer design their own pizza is great, but limit them to 5 or 6 toppings. When managing software, don’t let more features than you can test well roll out in a week .

 

7) If you find a bug in the software, you’d better let the client know you are going to fix it. If you find a bug in a customer’s beer, just start pouring a new one.

 

6) I don’t think you can effectively project manage while you are “WFH”. You definitely can’t pour beer from home either.

 

5) The first round of drinks is your beta, the appetizer is the soft-launch, the full meal is the production launch, and the dessert is a contract renewal.

 

4) Showing a customer the kitchen is great, if you have a nice kitchen. Showing a client your office is great, if you have a nice office.

 

3) If you use Pair Programming, don’t use that as a selling point in a project plan. If you pair pour beer, don’t do that again ever.

 

2) Using the final product after launch is just like having your “shift” beer.

 

1) You can sample the beer and call it user testing.

 

Video Games as Communication in Agile Software Development

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MBA Thesis by Clarke Foley  Read Here

University at Albany School of Business 2013

Clarke_Foley_MBA_Research_Poster

Executive Summary 

Clarke Foley video games as communication in agile software development teams

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As a project manager on Agile software development teams for the last three years, it has been my job to facilitate and improve communication between team members and stakeholders. This prompted me to inquire as to the possible relationship between video game communication and Agile software development team communication. I wanted to prove that the types of communications used for recreational and competitive video gaming can prepare a person for the interactions that occur on Agile software development teams.

 

When playing a video game today, it is very common for users to be involved in a real-time multiplayer environment with geographically dispersed, virtual teammates. They must work towards a common initiative either against the computer or another team. These game lobbies function similarly to virtual teams in the work environment at many software companies.

 

Agile game communication clarke foley

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By introducing video games as not only a recreational activity, but as a team building exercise, video games can help build the foundations of teamwork that lead to successful project completion. This blend of entertainment, social interaction, and task orientation is an enjoyable experience that is similar to when team members are pair programming or working on development tasks together.

This thesis shows that if a team strives to be fully functional and have high value communications, the use of daily Scrums, team chat rooms, shared code repositories, and other Agile processes can be catalysts. By introducing video games as a way to “break the ice” for team collaboration, there will likely be an increase in positive attitudes, behaviors, and social interactions within the team. This will subsequently improve the team’s openness to communication, perspective reconciliation, shared cognition, task effectiveness, social orientation, and can lead to decreased turnover, while increasing the likelihood of project success.