The document provides 13 productivity tips for busy tech professionals. It discusses that each tip is presented as a myth that is then debunked by providing a better approach. Some key tips discussed include focusing on passion over money, building expertise in key areas rather than learning a little about everything, developing networks rather than working as a "lone genius", learning to say no and scope tasks to avoid overcommitting, and maintaining accessible to-do lists with clear prioritization. Real-world examples are provided for many of the tips. The document aims to help professionals work smarter and more effectively.
Techniques and tactics for how to be more productive during job search, including how to find more time and concentrate on the most important things. Expanded and updated version for 2016.
Techniques and tactics for how to be more productive during job search, including how to find more time and concentrate on the most important things. Expanded and updated version for 2016.
We hear you! In our recent MUS Wellness survey, 70% of respondents said that “Lack of Time” was an obstacle to health goals. Well, it looks like we should focus on time-management strategies, and ways to include health into your already busy schedule. That’s what this workshop is about. Trust us, you deserve it.
How To Have a Point Of View and Develop a Persuasive Line of ArgumentKevin Duncan
To be effective in business, you need a clear point of view, and a clear line of argument that ensures that people agree with you. This highly popular training scheme and talk uses material from Kevin's books -The Diagrams Book and The Ideas Book - to explain how.
Work-Life Balance For Passionate Geeks - #OpenWestJoshua Warren
Work-life balance is touted in job postings everywhere - but what does it really mean? If you’re a passionate developer that’s excited about the technology you work with every day, you probably spend a fair bit of time outside of the office doing something that looks a lot like what you do at work. Even if you’re excited about your work, it’s important to find ways to rest, recharge and disconnect periodically. After spending 7 years building a team of passionate developers, I’ve learned that everyone approaches work-life balance differently, with vastly different results.
Career transition is uncomfortable, no doubt! However, it can be an incredibly valuable time if you are willing to step back, evaluate, and decide what you would like to change and what you would like to keep doing. Are you ready for a big change? Did you like what you were doing and would like to do more of it? Are you ready for a new work paradigm like a job portfolio? This talk contains practical and actionable tips for thriving (not just surviving) your transition.
Time Management Workshop - ULS Leadership ProgramKaren S Calhoun
Prepared as a component of the Pitt University Library System's Leadership Development Program, a year-long set of learning activities to strengthen ULS leadership capacity for achieving strategic initiatives, managing projects, and working in teams across organizational boundaries.
Productivity: The Secret Sauce for Success - Job Search Catherine Morgan
Who doesn’t need to squeeze more productive time out of their day? And have you ever noticed that when you have too much time, nothing gets done? Here's how you can be more productive every day. This deck will give you actionable tips that you can use immediately.
How can senior developers bridge the gap to becoming tech leads? How can mentors help them? We'll shine a light from above, a light from below, and we'll see if we can uncover some insights.
Michael Stratton, IT Solution Manager for the Spitfire Group and author of "The Effective Project Manager" created this presentation and presented to a group of technical resources attending the Denver Visual Studio User Group on 4/27/15 at the Microsoft campus in the Denver Tech Center.
It’s true that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Would you like to leave your next interview thinking, “I nailed it!”? Acing the Interview is an intensive workshop given by Career Transition Coach, Catherine Morgan, of Point A to Point B Transitions Inc.
We hear you! In our recent MUS Wellness survey, 70% of respondents said that “Lack of Time” was an obstacle to health goals. Well, it looks like we should focus on time-management strategies, and ways to include health into your already busy schedule. That’s what this workshop is about. Trust us, you deserve it.
How To Have a Point Of View and Develop a Persuasive Line of ArgumentKevin Duncan
To be effective in business, you need a clear point of view, and a clear line of argument that ensures that people agree with you. This highly popular training scheme and talk uses material from Kevin's books -The Diagrams Book and The Ideas Book - to explain how.
Work-Life Balance For Passionate Geeks - #OpenWestJoshua Warren
Work-life balance is touted in job postings everywhere - but what does it really mean? If you’re a passionate developer that’s excited about the technology you work with every day, you probably spend a fair bit of time outside of the office doing something that looks a lot like what you do at work. Even if you’re excited about your work, it’s important to find ways to rest, recharge and disconnect periodically. After spending 7 years building a team of passionate developers, I’ve learned that everyone approaches work-life balance differently, with vastly different results.
Career transition is uncomfortable, no doubt! However, it can be an incredibly valuable time if you are willing to step back, evaluate, and decide what you would like to change and what you would like to keep doing. Are you ready for a big change? Did you like what you were doing and would like to do more of it? Are you ready for a new work paradigm like a job portfolio? This talk contains practical and actionable tips for thriving (not just surviving) your transition.
Time Management Workshop - ULS Leadership ProgramKaren S Calhoun
Prepared as a component of the Pitt University Library System's Leadership Development Program, a year-long set of learning activities to strengthen ULS leadership capacity for achieving strategic initiatives, managing projects, and working in teams across organizational boundaries.
Productivity: The Secret Sauce for Success - Job Search Catherine Morgan
Who doesn’t need to squeeze more productive time out of their day? And have you ever noticed that when you have too much time, nothing gets done? Here's how you can be more productive every day. This deck will give you actionable tips that you can use immediately.
How can senior developers bridge the gap to becoming tech leads? How can mentors help them? We'll shine a light from above, a light from below, and we'll see if we can uncover some insights.
Michael Stratton, IT Solution Manager for the Spitfire Group and author of "The Effective Project Manager" created this presentation and presented to a group of technical resources attending the Denver Visual Studio User Group on 4/27/15 at the Microsoft campus in the Denver Tech Center.
It’s true that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Would you like to leave your next interview thinking, “I nailed it!”? Acing the Interview is an intensive workshop given by Career Transition Coach, Catherine Morgan, of Point A to Point B Transitions Inc.
Join us for an overview of behavior-driven development and test automation, which aided in the production of a Visualforce/JavaScript application for an enterprise client. Using Cucumber JVM, Selenium, Jenkins, and Git - the team was able to catch regression errors during development. We'll provide an overview of the solution used and how it worked in a real-world environment.
Being organized is a habit and you can make it happen by following some golden rules and using specific tools and techniques. Find out more on how to stop procrastinating and use your time more efficiently.
Agile Topics - Explained Simply - Practical Agilist.pptxBrian Link
I've put together this simple deck chock full of helpful tips and reminders about things like: running healthy standups, writing effective user stories, improving your backlog refinement and maintenance, focusing on getting value from sprint reviews, using retros to your greatest advantage, getting better at applying strategy using OKRs and roadmaps to align your backlog, and the importance of understanding why agile even works by studying the seven key mindsets and cultures that make up the Agile Mindset.
Experience share of the journey, includes failures and methods and techniques used to overcome those troubles and failures.
Objective today is to managing your focus. Not to manage your time, but to manage yourself to get the best out of limited time we have under the workload.
Deep Work™ is real. It's effective. It's immensely valuable for knowledge work. And yet, it's rare.
Organizations write software in two modes, the focussed mode centered around individual technical skill, and the collaboration mode centered around the communication within the team.
By nature, these two styles are at odds with each other and preferring one means downplaying the other. We know that stellar quality work can come out of an intensely focused mode of working. But we also know that equally stellar quality of work comes from highly aligned teams that work together like a well-oiled engine.
How then should we find a balance between the two? What can leaders and managers do to encourage both? How do we keep the changes small but fundamental?
Modern work cultures and environments are tailored for collaborative work and do not give enough thought to deep work. We will look at how making small changes to the work-day schedule, and the work environment can bridge the gap and support knowledge workers to do the best work of their life.
More details:
https://confengine.com/agile-india-2019/proposal/8290/the-deep-work-divide
Conference link: https://2019.agileindia.org
As the title suggests, I've been in this business for a while and I learned a few things along the way. Topics include how to work with clients & stakeholders, working in teams, and a few personal lessons which could prove useful for you as well.
Summer of Code 09 and How to have a kick ass ICT careersummerofcode
Here are the slides of the Summer of Code 09 talk.
They contain:
* Welcome and introduction to Summer of Code
* Main Seminar How to have a kick ass ICT career
Being a Product Manager requires structured and organized thinking, relationship building, and team leadership. In today's evolving landscape, Product Managers have had to learn how to conduct their duties completely virtually. Many of the styles of working we rely on in-person do not quite translate into this environment.
How to Effectively Work as a Tech Lead Tech leading is an art which turns the unique skills and talents of an engineering team into a well oiled machine. Many engineers eventually find themselves in a leadership position but without the experience to utilize it to the fullest extent. Developing tactics for how to route information and questions, use group-oriented communication style, developing delegation skills, product vision and working well with other teams can move a tech lead from good to great. During this discussion Derek Parham will talk about his lessons learned on tech leading Google Apps and provide tips to existing and future tech leads on how to play this role effectively. Speaker: Derek Parham Derek is an entrepreneur and technical leader with over twelve years of experience in software engineering. He is the founder of Google Apps for Businesses and served as its technical lead for nearly six years. He launched the project from scratch and helped grow the team to over one hundred engineers serving over 40 million customers today. The project utilized and developed some of the world’s largest scalable systems, along with shaping what is now referred to as "the cloud".
3. Idea behind this topic?
.
• Morning tech breakfast is one the good platform to get
introduced variety of technical topics.
• We deep dive to the technical topic with detailed
examples and use cases.
• Most of the sessions were made quite simple, so it
should be enjoyed by all tech stream resources.
5. .
Richard Seroter
Richard is a Product Manager for cloud computing provider Tier 3, a Microsoft MVP, blogger, author, trainer and frequent public
speaker.
6. How we gonna drive the session?
.
• Start with myth.
• Tip description
• Brainstorm through Real time examples.
7. .
• Tips are definitely abstract and subjective.
• Subjective tips are sometimes exciting or boring.
• Examples in discussion came up with personal
experience.
• Feel free to interrupt or yawn incase its non sense.
11. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• Can you accommodate new changes or roles?
• Your calendar is full. Are you open for new
opportunities?
• Do you feel productive?
15. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• Not sure for all, but paycheck is the main criteria to
measure the success.
• Passion overrated, you may chose someone who willing
to pay more.
• I say its not best way to go forward.
17. TIP 1 # Chase your passion
.
“Chase your passion, not your pension.” - Denis Waitley.
18. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• Motivation is the giant driver of productivity.
• Passion keeps yourself in positive situation helps a lot in
case day job is not happy or phase of job.
• In general... Techies don't get lot time to learn new
things, but passion is the only key which break the
barrier.
23. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• Learn little about everything.
• You should know everything about you talk or hear from
people talk about and stuff.
Thats a very big myth !!!
26. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• Investing in self is a core foundation principle.
• Maintaining breadth while developing depth in one or
two areas and proficiency in others.
27. Build expertise
.
o Expertise help to make future task easier.
o Expertise doesn't come in a day. It needs some
commitment and time investment.
o E.g. Bill Gates in his 20’s.
o It certainly term job safety.
28. My experience.
.
• A day with Regex problem
• Writing Tests : Spend couple of hours at the time of
development and save efforts on maintenance time
later.
29. Most of the employees situation in Dynamic market.
.
32. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• Become a stand alone expert, fully sufficient,
irreplaceable. Remember - “Increase your value.”
• Back in days, this was common mentoring words among
techies.
Thats another myth !!!
35. Lots of things to brag about?
.
● Develop and Maintain network and not be alone
genius.
● Many professional possess ego issues which is one of
the cause to not open up and build network.
● Working in close network greatly increase efficiency
and add years even decades in experience.
Why network?
1. Things Faster.
2. Broader set of advisors.
3. Professional and personal network work as a protection
in busy schedule.
41. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• We should always open for new ideas, new things.
• Saying no means,shutting door.
• Saying no also means, I am not open for great ideas.
Thats another myth !!!
• You may say lot of yes, in job or external activities, you
may feel great by doing this but it may result in packed
schedule.
47. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• If you have a tool, you follow process or methodology
and it works , dont think better - Just keep work with it.
• Seen this attitude many times in workplace.
I think its a Myth !!!!
50. Lots of things to brag about?
.
• Look for continuous improvement.
• Constantly look for efficient process to decrease
annoyance from the daily work.
• Better Look, Revise and Faster process.
• Smaller and continuous Invention in tools.
If you find any efficiency … Just go for it
!!!
51. How can we achieve improvement ?
.
• Continuous improvement is not spontaneous or massive
change but its a group of smaller steps.
• Its a slow process but after certain span , if you look
back you see smaller steps clubbed as a massive
change.
• Introspection and Feedback pathways for continuous
improvements.
56. Lots of things to brag about?
.
Become irreplaceable
• Thats a great goal.... Infact
• I am safe, no one can fire me.
• I get more and more raises.
• I can be in-despicable.
Its again … a big MYTH !!!!
58. Why become replaceable.
.
• Quality of great leaders.
• More flexibility: Good for new role.
• Build relations : Easy handover.
• Confidence : Current Role, review.
“Constantly look for replacements if you want to grow in organization”
- Steve Jobs
62. Lots of things to brag about?
.
● Get going and evaluate later.
● Its really important to get started rather actually thinking
what you are going to get.
● Dont waste time on churning or planning.
Its abstract but for some extent its a MYTH !!!!
64. Scope every task
.
Common scenario.
You spend some time and money on investigation or task, and later you end up spending more to
justify previous investment and not results. That really doesn't work but This happens all the time.
We need to Scope !!!!
Its Very effective tip in Agile planning. Scope is the factor
which decide when to cut off and when to extend.
1. Ask for help.
2. Simplify the task.
3. Cancel the task.
4. Decide to plow ahead.
65. Scope every task
.
● Scope a task and evaluate after certain interval either to
scrap or continue. Its not productive to burn yourself into
dead blackhole.
● No overestimation !!!!
● Keeping right balance is the key of this tip.
68. WTF….. , are you asking to scope out all the tasks?
.
● Tasks you can’t scope.
○ Shopping in mall with Wife.
○ Family dinner on christmas
● Scope longer and never ending tasks
○ Stop piling off
○ Know when to stop
○ Asses properly before start something new.
● Good practice to timebox the things.
70. Lots of things to brag about?
.
● Always capture tasks that you try or need to do.
● Might at workstation or might at home or on fridge.
● Its efficient but not productive.
Up to some extent its a MYTH !!!!
72. Accessible list.
.
● Rather keep burning memory, make short accessible
list that matters.
● Rather paper, use it with application which can by sync
across devices.
● A accessible at home, car or workstation. Check
regularly and try to improve it often.
Prioritization of the list is main KEY !!!!
73. Marissa Mayer
● Starts a day with creating a day long list.
● Very good in active prioritization through out day with
discarding the tasks which she cannot complete.
● Having a list is good but forcing the prioritization makes
very big deal.
74. M. Bloomberg
From -
Bloomberg by Bloomberg
● Start of new project with list of risks
● List goes to hundreds or beyond, by all imagination.
● Through out review, he starts to discard them one by
one.
● Go through risk list first before any project review.
77. ● One day I felt a complete facebook maniac.
● Suggested : I decided to unplug from social world.
● It was easy for me to get overwhelmed.
Up to some extent its a MYTH !!!!
Lots of things to brag about?
.
80. What Tim Russert thinks?
“You need to learn lot of little new things from other people to get many unique ideas as a insight”
81. ● Living in closed group, talking to same people , we
hear same thing, hardly get new idea.
● Interaction on social level its great thing to see lot of
new things from diverse section of society.
● Key is to reduce non-value activities to reduce the
noise.
● Staying connected is good source of getting new ideas,
and for better professional relationships.
Stay connected
.
82. ● Meetup groups
● Tech Breakfast sessions
● Stackoverflow
● Google groups
● Twitter
● Bookmarks
There are plenty of ways to be in connect, and doing
things like reading, writing comments, posting experiences
bring lot of new ideas to tap in.
.
85. Know when to focus
.
● Study says interruption to developer takes around avg
20 minutes to refocus.
● Doing multiple things is fine but its good to recognize
core focus time.
● Its great practice to find best working time and turnoff
external distraction.
● Core focus time can be used for mentally exhaustive
task.
88. Lots of things to brag about?
.
● We see set of instructions to follow the assigned path.
● “This is the channel to find a support”
● “This is the way to convey your concern”
Controversial to some of us but I think its a myth
most of the time.
91. Skip the proxy
.
● Information may be lost if it passes through layers.
● Going right straight to the source helps wastage of
time(in waiting) and interest.
● Main point is to skip middleman to become more
productive and get rid of quality, time and concerns.
“Build good relationships.”
94. Skip the proxy
.
● Its good to skip the proxy, but it doesn't mean to break
the rule or discipline.
● But I think sometimes its ok to bypass the path & take
your own decision.
“Using strategically and not by abusing person or privilege
this tip really makes difference in professional life.”