Build a Framework: Your chart junk is my roadmap / vision statement

I remember in the late 90's, seeing many examples of the little train of wedgies that folks used to characterize their business processes: I've used them myself (some of the above samples are mine, I'm comfortable in admitting it) - of course, I typically don't make this stuff up, I adapt from other examples, like everyone else. As I searched for a reasonable picture / schematic / "framework" for a "supply chain", I stumbled across what I believe to be…

To print or not to print? Depends on the life span of the content …

I've been (correctly) picked off as having an electronic preference for communications. Please don't hand me a printout - send an ecopy of that document, PowerPoint, project plan, whatever. PDF is ok, but original format preferred. Why do I like to gather information in an e-sorta way? Paper stacks up on my desk, fills up my file cabinets - it just gets in the way Paper is not searchable - I like to google my private knowledge base with Copernic…

How Fun – Timesheets

In the early part of the year, we tracked our time as a group using timesheets. We don't use these to justify our payroll or anything, just an exercise to validate that we were properly apportioning our time across multiple demands. Also, we wanted to help explain why it takes more than one week of calendar time to complete one week of effort time. As I was scanning old emails, I came across the summary / findings note that I…

Sally is a really busy person – more vendor yap (anti-buzzwords)

20 March, 2005
Vendor Management
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Had a week full of vendor meetings and presentations this week, captured some random thoughts: Bad Buzzwords 1 - I definitely tune folks out when they use the word "cool" to describe some piece of technology - how 1990's. The weird one came this week from a older gent, representing a fairly large company that has mixed hardware and professional services areas. A true moment of cognitive dissonance to hear that one. Bad Buzzwords 2 - Another one - probably…

Driving cost savings with packaged software vendors

23 February, 2005
Vendor Management
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Well, we're not exactly seeing agressive price drops, but we are looking for ways to either cut or control growth of software costs. Some specifics: Understand how the software is licensed. Concurrent Users? Actively monitor the number of users during peak times. Make sure you are paying maintenance only on the number of users that really attach - not the number of named users. Processor count or power? Watch out for server upgrades - you may get stuck with an…

The good and the bad about being a hands-on tech manager

25 January, 2005
Hands-On, Tech Management
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Interesting project that I have to take a deep-dive on this week - has to do with automating a piece of barcode printing software, and integrating it with a newly developed labeling process out in the shop. Project was hitting some significant snags, and I was asked to step in. Here's where hands-on software development skills are a boon and a curse ... The perception is that we're trying to get the forms software to work in a certain way…

Another Spam Graph – The Impact of Spammers Changing Tactics

17 September, 2004
Hands-On
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Well, Raymond Chen has blown me away with his detail, but I have another take on the whole History of Spam thing - the impact of spammers changing message formats to get past the spam filters. My curious habit is to count my email into two categories; read vs. unread. This was originally meant to be a measure of the pointless cc: / newsletter / internal announcement stuff I receive everyday; I have Outlook set to mark an eMail as…

Implementing Intranet on Speed: The Beginning

This week, we're kicking off a new project, implementing an intranet / portal for our newly independent company. I'm fascinated at how the "state of the art " has moved forward so much since the "old days" of the 90's. This is actually my third or fourth cut at an application like this (depending on how you define "portal"), and I'm sure it's going a bit faster simply because we're skipping over some portal design and admin process "dead ends"…