General Investing AI Investing For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2024 Artificial intelligence (otherwise known as AI) can save you lots of money and help you do things that were either costly or a pipe dream only a few years ago — and that includes helping you with investing and financial pursuits. View Cheat Sheet

Marketing 13 Ways To Do Inexpensive Market Research Article / Updated 03-07-2024 Here are some things you can begin to do for a new marketing campaign for your small business. Before you hire professionals, see what you can do yourself. Compare your approach to that of your competitors When you compare your marketing approach to competitors, you easily find out what customers like best. Make a list of the things that your competitors do differently than you. Does one of them price higher? Does another give away free samples? Do some of them offer money-back guarantees? Make a list of at least five points of difference between your business and its major competitors based on an analysis of marketing practices. Now ask ten of your best customers to review this list and tell you what they prefer — your way or one of the alternatives — and ask them why. Keep a tally. You may find that all your customers vote in favor of doing something differently than the way you do it now. Create a customer profile Collect or take photographs of people (from Facebook or email thumbnails, and with the individuals’ permission) who you characterize as your typical customers. Post these pictures on a bulletin board — either a real one or a virtual one like Pinterest (set this board to private because it’s definitely not for sharing beyond your marketing team) — and add any facts or information you can collect about these people. Consider this board your customer database. Whenever you aren’t sure what to do about any marketing decision, sit down in front of your bulletin board and use it to help you tune in to your customers and what they do and don’t like. Entertain customers to get their input Entertaining your customers puts you in contact with them in a relaxed setting where they’re happy to share their views. Hold a customer appreciation event or invite good customers to a lunch or dinner. Use such occasions to ask for suggestions and reactions. Bounce a new product idea off these good customers, or find out what features they’d most like to see improved. Your customers can provide an expert panel for your informal research — you just have to provide the food! After they get to know you, they may be happy to give you ongoing quick feedback via a chat room, Twitter, or a group text message, especially if they use these media routinely themselves. Use email to do one-question surveys If you market to businesses, you probably have email addresses for many of your customers. Try emailing 20 or more of them for a quick opinion on a question. The result? Instant survey! If a clear majority of respondents say they prefer using a corporate credit card to being invoiced because the card is more convenient, well, you’ve just gotten a useful research result that may help you revise your marketing approach. Always ask people for their email addresses whenever you interact with them, through your website or in person, so as to build a large email list. Emailing your question to actual customers or users of your product is far better, by the way, than trying to poll users of social networking websites for their opinions. Sure, you may be able to get a bunch of responses from people on Twitter, but would those responses be representative of your actual customers? Probably not. Research government databases Many countries gather and post extensive data on individuals, households, and businesses, broken down into a variety of categories. In the United States, you can find out how many people earn above a certain annual income and live in a specific city or state — useful if you’re trying to figure out how big the regional market may be for a luxury product. Similarly, you can find out how many businesses operate in your industry and what their sales are in a specific city or state — useful if you’re trying to decide whether that city has a market big enough to warrant you moving into it. If you want to use the web to explore useful data compiled and posted by various agencies of the US government, visit the United States Census Bureau website and check out the data on households and businesses. This site is your portal to US data from the economic census (which goes out to 5 million businesses every five years) and the Survey of Business Owners. Establish a trend report Set up a trend report, a document that gives you a quick indication of a change in buying patterns, a new competitive move or threat, and any other changes that your marketing may need to respond to. You can compile one by emailing salespeople, distributors, customer service staff, repair staff, or friendly customers once a month, asking them for a quick list of any important trends they see in the market. (You flatter people by letting them know that you value their opinions, and email makes giving those opinions especially easy.) Print and file these reports from the field and go back over them every now and then for a long-term view of the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. If you don’t work for one of the handful of largest and best-funded companies in your industry, then your trend analysis should also include careful tracking of what those giants are doing because they may be setting marketing or product trends that affect the rest of their industry. Tracking media coverage is easy on Google or other search engines. Analyze competitors’ collateral Print out or clip and collect marketing materials (brochures, ads, web pages, and so on) from competitors and analyze them by using a claims table. Open up a spreadsheet (or draw a blank table on a piece of paper or poster board) and label the columns of this new table, one for each competitor. Label each row with a feature, benefit, or claim. Add key phrases or words from an ad in the appropriate cell. Include one to three of the most prominent or emphasized claims per competitor. When filled in, this claims table shows you, at a glance, what territory each competitor stakes out and how it does the staking. One may claim it’s the most efficient, another the most helpful, and so on. Compare your own claims with those of your competitors. Are you impressive by comparison, or does a more dominant and impressive competitor’s claims overshadow you? Do your claims stand out as unique, or are you lacking clear points of difference? Research your strengths Perhaps the most important element of any marketing plan or strategy is clearly recognizing what makes you especially good and appealing to customers. To research your strengths, find the simplest way to ask ten good customers this simple but powerful question: “What’s the best thing about our (fill in the name of your product or service), from your perspective?” The answers to this question usually focus on one or, at most, a few features or aspects of your business. Finding out how your customers identify your strengths is a boon to your marketing strategy. Investing in your strengths (versus your competitors’ strengths or your weaknesses) tends to grow your sales and profits more quickly and efficiently. Probe your customer records Most marketers fail to mine their own databases for all of the useful information those databases may contain. Study your customers with the goal of identifying three common traits that make them different or special. This goal helps you focus on what your ideal customer looks like so you can look for more of them. Test your marketing materials Whether you’re looking at a letter, catalog, web page, tear sheet, press release, or ad, you can improve the piece’s effectiveness by asking for reviews from a few customers, distributors, or others with knowledge of your business. Do they get the key message quickly and clearly? Do they think the piece is interesting and appealing? If they’re only lukewarm about it, then you know you need to edit or improve it before spending the money to publish and distribute it. Customer reviewers can tell you quickly whether you have real attention-getting wow-power in any marketing piece. Just ask a half dozen people to review a new marketing piece while it’s still in draft form. Interview defectors Your company’s records of past customers are an absolute gold mine of information that can be easily overlooked. Use these records to figure out what types of customers defect, when, and why. If you can’t pinpoint why a customer abandoned you (from a complaint or a note from the salesperson, for example), try to contact the lost customer and ask him directly. Ask kids about trends In consumer marketing, it’s best if customers think you’re cool and your competitors aren’t. Because kids lead the trends in modern society, why not ask them what those trends are? Ask them simple questions like, “What will the next big thing be in (name your product or service here)?” Or try asking kids this great question: “What’s cool and what’s not cool this year?” Why? Because they know, and you don’t. For example, if teenage girls know what the next cool color combo will be, the way to find out is simple: Ask them what colors they want their room to be. (Or visit social media sites that skew toward younger members and see how they’re decorating their pages.) Create custom web analytics Web analytics are readily available for your websites and blogs, but they’re mostly traffic counts of various kinds. You probably want to know about sales, not just visitors. What are the most meaningful indicators of success on the web? Just as you (hopefully) do off-line, track online sales, repeat sales, lead collection, quality of leads (measured by rate of conversion), sign-ups, use of offers (such as you may post on a business site on Facebook, for example), and overall revenue and returns from e-marketing. These numbers tell the story of your marketing successes and failures online and give you something to learn from as you go. View Article

General Careers A Streamlined (But Good) Way to Choose a Career Article / Updated 03-06-2024 In finding a career, many people take career “tests,” struggle to get informational interviews, and even take career workshops. And despite all that, they end up far from sure they’ve made a wise choice of career. These steps can help you pick a career wisely: What career type are you? Which one or two of these are you: a word person, people person, Science-Technology-Engineering-Math (STEM) person, hands-on person, or entrepreneurial? Scan the options. Most people consider only a small fraction of worthy careers. A fast way to broaden your options is to scan books that profile lots of careers. Careers for Dummies provides a scoop on 340 good careers plus self-employment ideas. Also, the federal government publishes the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which offers more detailed (if drier) introductions to 250 careers. Embrace Google Search. Because Google Search is free, it’s easy to underestimate its potency. But it’s a remarkable curator of incomprehensibly large amounts of information. So do use Google Search to find articles and video introductions to careers that pique your interest. Particularly look for those that focus on a day in the life. These articles and videos are often more valid than an informational interview or three because each article or video may distill the experiences of multiple people in the field. Use a pros-and-cons list with a twist. Make pros- and-cons lists of two or three careers you’re now considering. Pick the one that feels best. How are you feeling about that? Now imagine that you picked the other career. Feeling better or worse? Now pick. Even if your top-choice career doesn’t feel perfect, it’s usually wiser to start preparing for that career. Most people who end up happy in their career feel that way after only they’ve become competent at it and have tailored and accessorized it to fit their preferences and strengths. If you wait on the sidelines for the perfect career to hit you upside your head, you may be waiting a long time. It’s wiser to pick a career sooner than later and then tweak as you go. Of course, the devil is the details. Careers for Dummies gives you all the details you need to wisely choose your career. View Article

General Accounting Quantitative Finance For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-26-2024 No matter if you're a quantitative finance novice or an expert, this Cheat Sheet can make sense of some equations and terms that you'll use on a regular basis. The following demystifies and explains some of the complexities and models. You can refer regularly to this information to help you in your quant adventures. View Cheat Sheet

Stocks Day Trading For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-22-2024 If you want to get started in day trading, doing some preparation before you dive in dramatically increases your odds of success. From setting up your trading business (and it is a business) and learning trading jargon to tracking the markets with technical indicators and calculating your performance, these articles get you on your way. View Cheat Sheet

Funds Mutual Fund Investing For Canadians For Dummies Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-22-2024 Mutual funds have been around for decades and despite other types of investments finding their way into investor portfolios, these securities are still king in Canada. Despite their still sky-high fees, mutual funds offer investors an easy way to buy into a diversified basket of stocks and bonds, which is really all you need for growing your wealth. Here are a few key points to keep in mind when considering these investments. View Cheat Sheet

Data Management Five Must-Have Features of Data Observability Article / Updated 01-26-2024 In this article you will learn: What is data observability? Why is data observability necessary for your data platform? What are the must-have features of a strong data observability platform? What is data observability? Data is increasingly important to today’s businesses — and ensuring the quality and reliability of that data is critical. High-quality data is the fuel for everything from building new products to driving accurate decision making. Data observability was created to make ensuring the quality of data easier, faster, and more scalable over the long term. Data observability gives organizations a complete view of their data's health at every stage — from data pipelines to infrastructure — as well as delivering at-a-glance views of dependencies and relationships between datasets. By leveraging data observability, data teams can quickly identify and resolve data quality issues before they reach data consumers, effectively reducing costs, minimizing impact, and driving confidence in the data products it protects. Why is data observability necessary? Data downtime — time when data is incomplete, erroneous, missing, or otherwise inaccurate — can be disastrous for organizations. From misallocated budgets to broken AI models, data quality issues can wreak havoc on organizations of all kinds. While data quality testing and monitoring are relatively common practices, data observability goes beyond the traditional methods of testing and monitoring. Data observability manages and improves data quality at scale by leveraging automated monitoring, custom rules, root cause analysis tools, and impact analysis to not only catch and resolve known data quality incidents faster but to detect and resolve unknown data quality issues as well. Five must-have elements of a strong data observability platform Choosing the right data observability tool can help your company avoid a menagerie of serious and costly data quality incidents, so it’s important to know what features you should have on your shopping list. Below are five features you should look for when considering a data observability solution for your data stack. ML-powered deep and broad data monitoring — both out-of-the-box and custom monitors A key aspect of an effective data observability platform is its use of machine learning (ML) for data monitoring. Platforms with ML enable teams to programmatically identify data quality and performance issues, such as data freshness, volume issues, and schema changes out-of-the-box. Data observability platforms also offer the ability to create custom monitors that are tailored to your specific business needs and applied to your most critical tables, providing deep monitoring where you need it and allowing you to tackle recurrent data issues that can crop up within specific data environments. End-to-end integrations across cloud and on-prem tooling An effective data observability platform should work with tools both in the cloud and on-prem. This necessary integration allows for comprehensive oversight of your data platform, from ingestion and storage to transformation and consumption. This integration helps track data movement across a variety of settings, which improves the platform's ability to find and fix quality issues quickly and effectively. Incident triaging and resolution workflows To reduce the impact of data problems, it's important to have effective workflows for triaging and resolving incidents. A good data observability platform simplifies the steps to detect, triage, resolve, and measure data quality issues. This usually involves automatic alerts, tools to prioritize issues by severity and impact, and robust integrations with messaging and project management tools that complement existing workflows. Efficient prioritization means data teams can concentrate on the most urgent problems, which helps decrease delays and keeps the data accurate and reliable. Root cause and impact analysis via field-level lineage Identifying the underlying cause of a data quality issue is essential to preventing it in the future. An effective data observability platform will provide field-level lineage, which provides an at-a-glance view of where the data came from, how it was changed, and what dependencies or data products are impacted by it. This information allows data teams to quickly understand the root-cause of an issue upon detection, decide who’s responsible for resolving it, and determine who should be informed to minimize cost. Performance monitoring — query optimization and cloud cost management A key part of a strong data observability platform is performance monitoring, which includes improving query efficiency and managing cloud costs. This function helps you find and fix inefficient data queries and processes that could raise operating costs or slow down performance. By making queries more efficient and optimizing cloud resources, organizations can make their data operations more cost-effective and deliver greater value from their data platform at a significantly lower cost. Pioneering the future of reliable data with data observability Implementing a data observability platform that includes these five elements will empower your organization to reduce data downtime, improve data reliability, deliver more value for stakeholders, and foster an environment of data trust across your organization. Download Data Observability For Dummies to discover how data observability can help you improve your data reliability, build organizational trust, and deliver even more value from your data products. View Article

Operations How a Quality Management System Boosts Product Excellence and Success Article / Updated 01-26-2024 In this article you will learn: What is a quality management system? What are the benefits of a good quality system? Why is data important in quality management? What is a challenge in implementing a quality management system? How does a good quality management system impact decision-making? What is a quality management system? A quality management system (QMS) is a strategic discipline that requires a framework, significant financial and resource investments, and an enterprise-wide commitment. Companies today recognize that quality isn’t just a vague attribute to claim in marketing materials or on a website. Quality is a key business driver that is essential to success. What are the benefits of a good quality system? It helps organizations to: Improve their processes and products Reduce costs Boost the customer experience Meet key compliance requirements Organizations are turning to digital solutions to automate quality management. A quality management system enables organizations to: Automatically document, manage, and control the structure, processes, roles, responsibilities, and procedures required to ensure quality management Centralize quality data enterprise-wide so that organizations can analyze and act upon it Access and understand data not only within the organization, but also external data residing with suppliers and other partners Why is data important in quality management? The key to leveraging a QMS for better business outcomes is data. Even the most advanced QMS is useless without effective data. Data gathered across the connected ecosystem – from manufacturing floors to business offices – provides the insights to boost efficiency, productivity, and quality. An effective QMS can help companies more easily collect, integrate, and act upon data to automate best practices and processes and boost quality enterprise-wide. This is crucial since, with all the different systems in use from product design to delivery, sharing data to derive insights can seem like an insurmountable task. What is a challenge in implementing a quality management system? Many organizations don’t have sufficient data or the processes in place to get insights on the products they build to make informed decisions or mitigate risk. They’re delivering what they think they should provide, or what’s required by law, but without the data-driven insights to help them reach the next level. How does a good quality management system impact decision-making? The next evolution of effective quality management is connected quality that arms companies with the data and automation needed to improve decision-making at every stage of the product lifecycle and empower employees to deliver the highest quality. Today’s quality management systems can enable companies to more easily and accurately automate quality processes to reach new levels of product excellence, brand reputation, and competitive leadership. And it requires an approach that involves the entire organization in order to succeed. References 10 Steps to Using Data to Improve Business Decisions Data Analysis and Decision-Making Tips for Making Good Business Decisions About the Book Wiley has recently published Advanced Quality Management for Dummies, ETQ Special 2nd Edition. The book provides a dynamic introduction to comprehensive quality management and helps business leaders discover the steps required to select and implement a QMS that can bring a quality culture to an organization and create more satisfied customers. Download ETQ’s Advanced QMS For Dummies eBook to discover more about the operational and business impact of a QMS, plus best practices for selecting and deploying the right QMS for your organization. View Article

Fitness Careers Important Tools for Personal Trainers Article / Updated 01-24-2024 You wear many hats in your role as a personal trainer. You're a salesperson, scientist, friend, coach, motivator, teacher, employer, bookkeeper, and business owner, to name just a few. To be successful wearing any of these hats, you need to be equipped properly — and that means you need to have the right tools to use at the right time. Your mindset The equipment available to help you be a successful trainer is limitless: cellphones, computers, software programs, weight-training equipment, cardiovascular equipment. . . . The list goes on. No matter what types of toys you have (or how expensive or cutting edge they are), it won't matter if you don't have the most important one: the right mindset. Important factors for having the right mindset are: Honesty: You need to be honest with yourself about what you realistically can and cannot do; this flows through to your clientele as well. Determination: Not every day is easy; you won't always have a full book, and sometimes those slow days end up being weeks. Pushing ahead and staying on track when the going gets tough takes determination and focus. Willingness: You need to be willing to change if your original course of action isn't producing the results that you want. You also need to be willing to keep an open mind when your client is complaining that she's not happy with your services. Willingness is more about what you should do as opposed to what you want to do — after all, sometimes you'll have to do things that you don't want to do. Your certification Certification is your badge of honor — it tells everyone who works with you, from employers to clients, that not only do you say you know what you're doing, but you can also prove it. Certification assures your client that you're a true fitness professional; you've undergone stringent studies and testing protocols to figure out what to do and what not to do as a personal training professional. It ensures your client that you know what they don't — which is how to help her reach her fitness goals, safely and efficiently. Being certified also gives you the credibility you need for other professionals and clients to take you seriously. Certification helps you to build a solid rapport with the people you will be doing business with, such as: Employers Clients Mentors Media contacts Doctors with whom you have a referral relationship Your business card Here are some tips for making a long-lasting impression with your business card: In the case of a chance meeting, when someone asks you, "What is it that you do?" have a brief summary (called an elevator pitch) prepared that makes you memorable as you hand her your business card. For example, you can say, "I help people look great naked" or "I build muscles." Make sure the information on your card is correct and up to date. If your area has just recently implemented ten-digit dialing, if your area code has changed, or if you've just gotten an e-mail address, make sure you invest in a new set of business cards to reflect your new contact information. The impression you leave with a potential client is the one that will bring her back to you for business. Make sure that your business card reflects everything you want your potential client to remember about you — professionalism, integrity, quality, and trustworthiness. Tape measure The tape measure can be used for many different things. You can record your client's anthropometric measurements (body circumference) with it to show change and make sure she's on track to achieving her personal goals. You can also measure degrees of flexibility as well as how far your client can reach past her toes in the sit-and-reach flexibility test. Other uses for the tape measure are: Measuring vertical jump height Measuring plyometric (explosive) movement distances Measuring length of stride Measuring stance distances Body-weight scale Going hand in hand with recording baseline biometrics (body measurements), a scale is useful and important in determining gross bodyweight. After you've recorded your client's gross body weight, you can assess body-fat percentage, BMI, and one-rep-max percentages to determine how heavy your client needs to be to train for her workouts. Heart-rate monitor Having a heart-rate monitor for your client to use while you train her has multiple benefits: It allows you to see where her heart rate is without stopping her exercise. A heart-rate monitor is a lot more accurate than the palpation method. Your client will get instant feedback from it — it is an invaluable tool when it comes to teaching clients about perceived rate of exertion and working intensity. You can use it to teach your client stress management, breathing, and biofeedback techniques. Jump rope A jump rope is a light, inexpensive, very portable, and excellent tool for challenging your client's cardiovascular system. Anyone at any fitness level can use it — and as exercises go, your client will burn more calories per minute jumping rope than doing any other activity! Skipping rope is a challenging workout that burns about 360 calories per half-hour (by comparison, moderate running or jogging burns about 330 calories per half-hour). Experts suggest rubber, leather, or beaded ropes (ropes with small plastic tubes on a cord). The grip should be foam-based to absorb sweat and give your client a firm grasp. The client should be able to stand on the rope and hold the handles slightly above waist height. Jump ropes generally come in 6- and 9-foot lengths, and many have detachable handles so you can trim the rope yourself. View Article

Project Management How to Apply the Agile Principles of Project Management Article / Updated 01-23-2024 Agile principles are designed specifically to increase the success of your projects. Agility in project management encompasses three key areas: Making sure the development team can be productive and can sustainably increase productivity over long periods of time Ensuring that information about the project’s progress is available to stakeholders without interrupting the flow of development activities by asking the development team for updates Handling requests for new features as they occur and integrating them into the product development cycle An agile approach focuses on planning and executing the work to produce the best product that can be released. The approach is supported by communicating openly, avoiding distractions and wasteful activities, and ensuring that the progress of the project is clear to everyone. All 12 principles support project management, but principles 2, 8, and 10 stand out: (2) Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage. (8) Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. (10) Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential. Following are some advantages of adopting agile project management: Agile project teams achieve faster time-to-market, and consequentially cost savings. They start development earlier than in traditional approaches because agile approaches minimize the exhaustive upfront planning and documentation that is conventionally part of the early stages of a waterfall project. Agile development teams are self-organizing and self-managing. The managerial effort normally put into telling developers how to do their work can be applied to removing impediments and organizational distractions that slow down the development team. Agile development teams determine how much work they can accomplish in an iteration and commit to achieving those goals. Ownership is fundamentally different because the development team is establishing the commitment, not complying with an externally developed commitment. An agile approach asks, “What is the minimum we can do to achieve the goal?” instead of focusing on including all the features and extra refinements that could possibly be needed. An agile approach usually means streamlining: barely sufficient documentation, removal of unnecessary meetings, avoidance of inefficient communication (such as email), and less coding (just enough to make it work). Creating complicated documents that aren’t useful for product development is a waste of effort. It’s okay to document a decision, but you don’t need multiple pages on the history and nuances of how the decision was made. Keep the documentation barely sufficient, and you will have more time to focus on supporting the development team. By encapsulating development into short sprints that last one to four weeks or less, you can adhere to the goals of the current iteration while accommodating change in subsequent iterations. The length of each sprint remains the same throughout the project to provide a predictable rhythm of development for the team long-term. Planning, elaborating on requirements, developing, testing, and demonstrating functionality occur within an iteration, lowering the risk of heading in the wrong direction for extended periods of time or developing something that the customer doesn’t want. Agile practices encourage a steady pace of development that is productive and healthy. For example, in the popular agile development set of practices called extreme programming (XP), the maximum workweek is 40 hours, and the preferred workweek is 35 hours. Agile projects are sustainable and more productive, especially long term. Traditional approaches routinely feature a death march, in which the project team puts in extremely long hours for days and even weeks at the end of a project to meet a previously unidentified and unrealistic deadline. As the death march goes on, productivity tends to drop dramatically. More defects are introduced, and because defects need to be corrected in a way that doesn’t break a different piece of functionality, correcting defects is the most expensive work that can be performed. Defects are often the result of overloading a system — specifically demanding an unsustainable pace of work. Priorities, experience on the existing project, and, eventually, the speed at which development will likely occur within each sprint are clear, making for good decisions about how much can or should be accomplished in a given amount of time. If you’ve worked on a project before, you might have a basic understanding of project management activities. In this table, you find a few traditional project management tasks, along with how you would meet those needs with agile approaches. Use the table to capture your thoughts about your experiences and how agile approaches looks different from traditional project management. Contrasting Historical Project Management with Agile Project Management Traditional Project Management Tasks Agile Approach to the Project Management Task Create a fully detailed project requirement document at the beginning of the project. Try to control requirement changes throughout the project. Create a product backlog — a simple list of requirements by priority. Quickly update the product backlog as requirements and priorities change throughout the project. Conduct weekly status meetings with all project stakeholders and developers. Send out detailed meeting notes and status reports after each meeting. The development team meets quickly, for no longer than 15 minutes, at the start of each day to coordinate and synchronize that day’s work and any roadblocks. They can update the centrally visible burndown chart in under a minute at the end of each day. Create a detailed project schedule with all tasks at the beginning of the project. Try to keep the project tasks on schedule. Update the schedule on a regular basis. Work within sprints and identify only specific tasks for the active sprint. Assign tasks to the development team. Support the development team by helping remove impediments and distractions. On agile projects, development teams define and pull (as opposed to push) their own tasks. Project management is facilitated by the following agile approaches: Supporting the development team Producing barely sufficient documents Streamlining status reporting so that information is pushed out by the development team in seconds rather than pulled out by a project manager over a longer period of time Minimizing nondevelopment tasks Setting expectations that change is normal and beneficial, not something to be feared or evaded Adopting a just-in-time requirements refinement to minimize change disruption and wasted effort Collaborating with the development team to create realistic schedules, targets, and goals Protecting the development team from organizational disruptions that could undermine project goals by introducing work not relevant to the project objectives Understanding that an appropriate balance between work and life is a component of efficient development View Article