It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. One of the final physical books I recall reading is about Jerry’s work, not written by him, but by his students: The Gift of Time, edited by Fiona Charles with contributions from James Bach, Michael Bolton, Esther Derby, Naomi Karten, Tim Lister, Johanna Rothman, Dani Weinberg, his wife, and more. My copy of the book is copyrighted in 2008 and published by Dorset House.
Continue reading Remembering Jerry: The Gift of TimeCategory Archives: Leadership
Technical and personnel leadership
Remembering Jerry: Amplifying your Effectiveness
It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. For today, I picked Amplifying your Effectiveness, edited by Jerry, James Bach, and Naomi Karten. It contains collected essays from authors attending the AYE conference format that Jerry co-organized for a couple of decades. My copy of the book is copyrighted in 2000 and published by Dorset House.
Continue reading Remembering Jerry: Amplifying your EffectivenessRemembering Jerry Weinberg: More Secrets of Consulting
It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. Today, we continue the topic of consulting as I picked More Secrets of Consulting – The Consultant’s Tool Kit published by Dorset House in 2002.
Continue reading Remembering Jerry Weinberg: More Secrets of ConsultingCelebrate failure
A colleague of mine shared something online that got my brain working. Just earlier I pointed out a lesson to another coach that I learned from Diana Larsen regarding errors or failures.
Let’s dig into this.
Continue reading Celebrate failureTesting and Management Mistakes: The Inner Team
I found this old draft blog entry while going through some older blog entries. Since this has been laying around for many years now, I figured, it should be time to publish it now. Enjoy.
A couple of years ago Michael Bolton started a blog series on testing and management mistakes, to which I contributed four follow-up blog entries with an introduction, replacing blaming with placating, congruent responses, and causes. All of this was based on a single psychological model, or better, my understanding of it after having read through most of Jerry Weinberg’s work.
Recently I started to dive into some topics in psychology. While working through work from Schulz von Thun, I remembered this series when I crossed the idea of the inner team. I decided to revisit the original conversation and discuss it in the light of the inner team.
Schulz von Thun describes the inner team as a collective of personalities that each of us develops and carries with us. In any conversation, we face the struggle of forces for or against an argument. We also have a team leader, which could be stronger developed with some of us, or weaker, thereby yielding to different responses – sometimes even incongruent ones depending on the inner team member that cries the loudest at any given time.
Let’s revisit the conversation of the project manager asking a tester to work over the weekend, and take a closer look at the inner team within this tester.
Continue reading Testing and Management Mistakes: The Inner TeamRemembering Jerry: An Introduction to General Systems Thinking
It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. Today, I picked An Introduction to General Systems Thinking in its 25th-anniversary edition published by Dorset House Publishing in 2001, the original being published in 1975.
Continue reading Remembering Jerry: An Introduction to General Systems ThinkingThe Causation Fallacy – or how not to design salary systems
Re-visiting so many of Jerry Weinberg’s books in the past couple of weeks has made me realize some lessons I merely had on the back burner in my mind, waiting to be activated. One of these learnings is the Causation Fallacy, best illustrated by this funny video:
Continue reading The Causation Fallacy – or how not to design salary systemsRemembering Jerry: Quality Software Management Volume 4 – Anticipating Change
It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. Today, we are going to take a look at what I consider the first book in Jerry’s seminal series on managing quality software: Quality Software Management Volume 4 – Anticipating Change published by Dorset House Publishing in 1997.
Continue reading Remembering Jerry: Quality Software Management Volume 4 – Anticipating ChangeRemembering Jerry: Quality Software Management Volume 3 – Congruent Action
It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. Today, we are going to take a look at what I consider the first book in Jerry’s seminal series on managing quality software: Quality Software Management Volume 3 – Congruent Action published by Dorset House Publishing in 1994.
Continue reading Remembering Jerry: Quality Software Management Volume 3 – Congruent ActionRemembering Jerry: Quality Software Management Volume 2 – First-order Measurement
It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. Today, we are going to take a look at what I consider the first book in Jerry’s seminal series on managing quality software: Quality Software Management Volume 2 – First-order Measurement published by Dorset House Publishing in 1993.
Continue reading Remembering Jerry: Quality Software Management Volume 2 – First-order Measurement