We have an unnatural confidence in dashboards. When we see dashboard indicators we make all kinds of assumptions about them that may or not be true. But we depend on them all the same. This isn’t restricted to just project management dashboards though I have more experience with those than any others but dashboard indicators of all kinds. Think about this. When you are driving and you see a green light, don’t you go through…
I’m struck by the degree in recent times that our world is filled with uncertainty. Oh there has always been uncertainty. I know that. Control is an illusion but lately so many things that people have counted on have become uncertain. Geo-Politics In the geo-political sphere in the last few months we’ve seen big changes in the way the US Administration works. No matter which side of the American political divide you’re on, I doubt…
Project Managers almost always find themselves in the middle of conflicting interests. On the one hand, marketing wants a project finished immediately. On the other hand engineering is going to need much, much more time than they’d ever imagined in order to get the project right. On the other hand, management wants to do the project with less money. On the other hand, sales needs new projects started for which there are no resources. In…
You’ll find here the index of the webinar series OnLine or OnPremise which discusses the key elements of choosing between purchasing software for an on-premise installation vs. subscribing to software in the cloud. Each webinar is only 5-6 minutes long. You can watch the webinars in sequence if you prefer but they do not need to be seen in any particular order: Webinar OnLine or OnPremise #1 – Overview Webinar OnLine or OnPremise #2 –…
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…