--- title: "Chatting with Johanna Rothman" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/8/chatting-with-johanna-rothman.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/8/chatting-with-johanna-rothman.html" published: "2004-12-08T22:21:00" updated: "2004-12-08T22:21:00" tags: ["Off Topic", "Project Management"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I just finished a wonderful meeting with non other than Johanna Rothman , one of my favorite blog authors, who just happens to be in Israel this week. We talked for about two hours on topics relating to project…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Chatting with Johanna Rothman By Roy Osherove December 8, 2004 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic), [Project Management](https://osherove.com/blog/category/project-management) **Historical article** · Originally published December 8, 2004; technical details may be outdated. I just finished a wonderful meeting with non other than [Johanna](http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/blogger.html) [Rothman](http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/htpblogger.html), one of my favorite blog authors, who just happens to be in Israel this week. We talked for about two hours on topics relating to project management, development scheduling and interviewing techniques. But wait! Wanna hear the really great part? You'll be able to **hear** that conversation real soon **because I have it all recorded.** Yep, I checked the other day and it seems that my laptop's microphone is "good enough" to be able to record a conversation between people that are close enough to it, but still comfortable. So I did. And it went great. I have about an hour and 25 minutes of recording audio that I am thinking can either be cut down to an hour and 13 so it can fit on one CD, or split it all into two Cd's (that is - 2 mp3 files you can burn separately). I just need to edit it during the weekend and remove all the stupid mistakes I put in there (some silly questions with no real purpose, for example), and put in some music and introduction in the beginning of the interview. In any case, it's going to be very interesting! I'll have a post with more info on what's exactly in there when I can actually give you a link you can download it from. Just for fun, here's a small part of the questions that were discussed: - as a manager – what is the problem that you learned the most from? - How do you hire a developer? - What do you think of the Microsoft Puzzle questions as an interviewing technique? - what’s the AYE conference? - What do you look for in a good project manager? - what can I do to better myself as a manager? - What other good blogs do you recommend people read? - what is the main problem with software development management today? - What are the main problems people keep coming to you with? - What advice would you give to a person just starting out as a team leader? - What is the worst mistake you've ever made as a project manager? Many more like these and about other topics such as Agile development, writing and lessons learned the hard way.. ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - Dec 11, 2004 ### [What I look like (kinda)](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/11/what-i-look-like-kinda.html) - Dec 9, 2004 ### [Godwin's Law](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/9/godwins-law.html) - Dec 3, 2004 ### [The Self Project - YAPP (Yet Another Programming Paradigm?)](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/3/the-self-project-yapp-yet-another-programming-paradigm.html) - Dec 3, 2004 ### [Army Platoon gets an X Box + 30 games, courtesy of MS](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/3/army-platoon-gets-an-x-box-30-games-courtesy-of-ms.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/