Topic Teasers Vol. 104: Linking Holiday Absences with Performance
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Question: It’s probably too late for this season, but every holiday season my team’s performance levels sink as people are pulled out of service for vacations. In fact, this is an issue throughout the year with innumerable reasons why team members won’t be at work. Yet management still expects us to deliver as planned. Is there any good way to manage these absences so they are less disruptive to the work progress of the team, while honoring the need for our colleagues to take much deserved time off?
Topic Teasers Vol. 80: Compliance Without Power
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Question: We recently developed new accounting software for internal use to create invoices. Due to interest in tracking benefits realization and also capturing customer reactions to evaluate our success, my project team has been asked to stay on and address any issues for six months. One of the sales representatives gives special discounts and terms but fails to enter them into the new system for billing, and the angry customers call my team. I’ve told his manager, but the behavior continues. It makes the process improvement statistics for our software look bad and is costing us money. What can I do?
Pick your answer then Test Your Knowledge!
| A. | If talking with the sales representative’s manager didn’t work, talk to the manager’s manager. This sales person should be fired. |
| B. | Take the salesperson to lunch. See if there is anything bothering him. Try to help him solve any work-related or personal issues, so that he can focus more on entering the correct data for billing. |
| C. | Alert the representative by e-mail when the invoices will be sent out for two months. Give him a deadline to enter any unique terms not covered by the default pricing tables in the software. Copy his manager. |
| D. | Prepare a second training class on how to operate the new software and schedule all of the employees in the organization who use the software to attend. If one person isn’t using it correctly, perhaps there are more. |
Transitioning a Co-located Scrum Team: Lessons Learned
byMany companies are outsourcing to India, and the process of creating an agile, distributed team could have many potential pitfalls. Here, lessons learned are shared based on two years of continuous improvement to get a strong, contributing agile scrum team.
Translating Human Resources Management into Success
byOne of the most important traits that a project manager working in the translation industry can have is a skill in dealing with people--the translation industry is at its core highly personal and highly human. This is one reason why a translation project manager should have a good grasp particularly on planning for, obtaining, developing and managing human resources.
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Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes. |
