It was worse than I thought.  I figured I’d be able to get at least one essay a week published during the month of November, but that even proved to be difficult.  I’m just juggling too many things right now, but I expect after the holidays for things to relax enough to continue with my goal of publishing at least one essay a week and at most two.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and festive Thanksgiving holiday this year.   For the past two years I’ve been cooking up the turkey.  Last year I followed a Martha’s Stewart recipe that was published on Yahoo.  It was good, but it was nothing to write home about.  This year I found a recipe on http://allrecipes.com/.  I was looking for something simple and different. What caught my attention with this recipe was the overwhelming number of positive reviews, so I gave it a try, and we were not to be disappointed.   The recipe is called “Perfect Turkey.”  It was moist, tasty, and really simple to put together.  Everyone commented on how good it was, but when the kids all tell you it’s the best turkey they ever had, you know it was good, or all the others were really bad.  If you’re looking to try something new, I recommend you give this recipe a try.

As I did last month and I plan to do this monthly, I would like to let you know what the visitors have been reading for November and since the site has been open.

The top 5 articles for the month of November are as follows:

1. “Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
2. “Part 2: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
3. “Outsourcing Debate – Two Guys Talk it Out”
4. “Part 3: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
5. “Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules”

The top 5 articles since the site has been up are as follows:

1. “Why Software Process Adoption Fails”
2. “No Pain, No Gain”
3. “Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules”
4. “Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
5. “Danger: Agile Practices at Work”

Recently, the article “An Objective Method for Navigating Your Project Successfully” has been seeing an up tick in interest.  If you are looking for techniques for gaining more control and predictability over your project schedule during the test and defect fix phases of the SDLC, the techniques described here offer an effective approach to managing that phase.   To me, it’s the most useful and practical article that I’ve published that can make an immediate difference in your management of this phase of the project.  If any of you have been using the practices after reading the article, I’d be very interested to learn of your experiences: good or bad.

I’ve been building a nice backlog of articles to write.  Being that I still practice software management and don’t write for a living, my work gives me a wealth of inspiration.  My technique is to notice my reaction to circumstances and events during the day, think of a title, note the main points, and send myself an email message to record it.  My best writing is typically when I have a very strong emotional reaction to a topic.  When that happens, the essays seem to just write themselves. 

Please keep reading, tell your friends about You Want it When, and please share your thoughts.  Email me if would at “bill(at)yuwantitwhen(dot)com”  to share your thoughts, critical or positive commentary or even topics that you would like me to cover in future articles.

I offer my best wishes to my readers this holiday season for health, peace, love, and happiness.

Happy Holidays!