I haven't written one of these hands-on hardware / software evaluation posts for some time - it's not that kind of blog, really - but I've been asked a lot of questions about my Surface Pro 3, and this is an easy way to let many folks know the answers. Also - I am making some interesting discoveries with the new device - some you might not think about at first. Am I surprised by some of these issues? Yes…
A real-life journey of self-discovery that gave me insight to the impact of transformational change to the organization. Get out of your comfort zone once in a while, to have meaningful empathy with the team you are trying to change.
Accelerate your IoT exploration with this simple framework for explaining the building blocks of IoT solutions; target the areas that present the biggest unknowns.
When introducing a new topic like the Internet of Things, you may be disappointed - at first. Your organization is still waiting; when will we think a little longer term? How to be ready for opportunities that may present themselves.
Most manufacturing companies face challenges when contemplating Digital Products and the IoT, because they are not making Highly Valuable Things or Mass-Market Things, but Specialty Things – niche products with very targeted appeal. And “Information as a Product/Service” will be a radical departure.
Few cloud computing vendors are able to produce a plausible cost model with any level of detail. All of your SMB customers are asking the same question, so why don't you have a simple, clear, canned answer? In the absence of a vendor model, this article will help you quickly work up the big chunks of the opportunity in short order.
We've got the activity captured, and now we have "effectiveness" ratings for the people in the group - how will we put them together and see a relationship? Mechanically, this is a simple XY scatter graph - a standard chart type in both Excel and Google Docs. Let's take a look at a sample data set that illustrates the idea: This is the picture I expected to see: the more you use the system (the X axis), the more results…
... and suddenly you're not there any more." - The Ghost of Christmas Present, enjoying a memento mori moment A repeating theme in my feed reader has been the drive to "work different"; clunky grammar aside, we need to change the way we communicate and collaborate, increase our focus on innovation, and spend less time in pointless meetings. On that latter point, I read this article on my latest flight; Mankins talks about the galling amount of time spent in…
A few years ago, I was interviewing candidates for a systems analyst job, and trotted out one of my standard questions: Tell me something you have done that you are proud of. This particular developer called out her source code annotations (comments), and was rather specific about her own comment quality standards. But when I asked her if she likes to write documentation, she was quite hesitant - and that surprised me a bit, made me think. What's the difference…
For our back-of-the-napkin experiment in tracking the useful value produced by enterprise systems - our next step will move away from the technical tools for a bit, and take a look at results. Specifically, we want to understand who is "delivering the goods" - and some sense of their success relative to others. At first, the question sounds simple - how do you measure success? Metrics are a common element of any business activity, and people are often paid, and…