Esther and I are working together this week, starting over again with the management book. This time, we’re pair-writing, and it worked surprisingly well today. We collaborate — and we have conflict, where the person at the keyboard says, “Oh no, I’m not writing that down.” However, we worked until about 5:30 today, when […]
My Stickyminds column this month is about testing dashboards. If you’ve seen something even better, I hope you post a comment there or here.
A colleague of mine, Brad Goldense, does a biannual survey about new product development practices. It’s time for another one. Here’s what he says: Is Product Development important to you and your company?
I’m a Tour de France addict. I bicycle like those guys only in my dreams. But when I was watching the race last night, I realized something: the riders who are in a position to win the Tour are adaptable riders. They don’t excel at just sprinting, or just mountains, or just rolling-hills, or
In general, technical people don’t seem to make great managers (unless they’ve been trying to become great). A result of that is what Reifer says in his IEEE Software (May/June 2004) column Catching the Brass Ring: “software professionals aren’t often tapped for top corporate leadership positions.” He goes on to say “executives of my
I now have a new hard drive. And I’m back from vacation. Thanks to the folks at MacResQ, I didn’t lose any data at all. (Truly amazing with a broken hard drive. If you need a chuckle, read commute mathematics. When I travel, I catch up on my magazine and journal reading. A nice side-effect
I’ve been trying to boot my computer for the last 3 hours. It’s not clear when I’ll fix the hard drive. No posts and no emails until I do…
Not all projects should be done. Some projects don’t even rate discussion. But sometimes it’s a lot harder to tell when a project is worthy and should be considered. Here are some questions I ask when trying to evaluate when a project is worthwhile: What business need does this project fill? (Does the organization
If you haven’t read the comments starting from here from the previous posts, please do. Effern blew the whistle — so very nicely — when he perceived I hadn’t considered enough options. It’s possible I didn’t consider enough options:-) (Maybe I didn’t develop three or more worthy alternatives.) What Effern did, oh so graciously,
I’m in conversation with a client about a possible project. The Big Guy wanted to meet with me immediately, but had constrained time, so I shifted my schedule and met with him. It was clear from our conversation that he didn’t quite know what he wanted, but he did want a proposal from me.