In today’s Agile-oriented software world, it’s all too tempting to skip the important steps of defining the work completely. There is no doubt that there is a meeting of minds between the client and the developers to end up with a product that fulfills the client’s desires and is of high quality and rapid arrival but once we get into the actual management of the project, there are differences in perspectives that are not obvious.…
In my brief flirtation with Psychology in my first year of university, I learned more than I’d ever want to know about rats in a maze. My distaste for the exercise would come back to haunt me last year when my stepson needed a dwarf hamster for his science project. Wendy is now a part of the family. You can see Wendy and our home-made maze on the right. You’ve no doubt seen the images…
The whole concept of Agile was designed to prevent project bloat. Back in the 1990’s when software development and deployment projects became mega projects a little too easily, the notion of Agile became much more popular. We’ve all heard about Agile. The idea that we’ll develop incrementally in sprints and after each sprint we should have deployable code, each time with a bit more functionality. It’s a great idea. We use Agile project management within…
I get this request on a semi-regular basis and given the work I’ve done with Microsoft, Oracle and other technical partners over the years, I’ve been involved in a number of early-release software programs. So, let’s talk about what people mean when they talk about Beta Test Programs. The first thing to know is that the perspectives of what the vendor is hoping for and wants are often different than what the users want. First…
I have an expression that my staff and clients have heard me use often. It’s a favorite of mine. “If you are a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” It’s a paraphrase I know and as I was writing this article, I thought it behooved me to look up the source. It wasn’t much of a surprise that the author was someone who I read a lot of a long time ago, Abraham Maslow. …
I admit it. I’m a black-hat thinker. I think I always have been but many years ago, my first partner gave me a copy of Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”. The book is tiny but the impact was profound. De Bono was interested in how people think and in how people could train themselves to think more creatively; more laterally. There’s no one hat that’s perfect of the six, each has its own attraction…
My staff have heard me use the expression all too often. “Tail wags dog! Film at 11.” As though it were a breaking news headline on CNN. I use the expression though to talk about organizations that approach our company with an interest in deploying our enterprise timesheet system or an enterprise project management system but have somehow gotten the cart ahead of the horse (Yes, I know. It’s another expression). The conversation usually starts…
Perhaps you’ve heard the proverb “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The expression can be traced back to a novel from the early 1800’s called Mrs. Dymond but the sentiment of the expression is understood by everyone. If you do something for someone else that’s a good thing but teaching them to do it for themselves is a much greater…
Many years ago I was forced to take an Economics Statistics course at McGill University in Montreal. It was a requirement for my Economics Major and one of the most miserably tough math classes I’d ever encountered. The class was taught by an older gentleman who was maybe 150 or maybe 160 years of age. He had tenure, he immediately informed us so there was no one we could complain to when he would fail…
There I am at the PMI 2016 Global Congress in San Diego listening to keynote speaker Sue Gardner. Ms. Gardner’s resume is enough to make you pause and take notice. She has worked with numerous Silicon Valley companies including Wikimedia who run the famous Wikipedia. She has been on Fortune Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women list and that alone is saying quite a bit. So, I was interested to hear her views on the future…