If the right document, report, presentation is difficult to locate, and people can't find it to use it - it might as well not exist. This article looks at multiple ways to overcome this challenge to facilitate corporate innovation.
Master the hierarchy of information requirements to unleash corporate innovation, with insights into problem-solving and the importance of knowledge management.
Drilling into the important role of capturing knowledge in promoting corporate innovation, highlighting the importance of creation & curation, sharing & collaboration, and impactful use.
Corporate innovation struggles, and not from a lack of ideas or capital. More often, the constraints are time and attention.
Complexity means different things to different people in different conversations. Are we trying to simplify a process? Complexity is bad. Understand a supply chain? Complexity is good. Don't buzzword your initiatives with "complexity" until you get a wee bit more specific.
It's a common problem statement - 'I don't have enough information to (run my business unit, manage this process, identify opportunities, etc.)'. The solution designer, when faced with a question like this, starts with a little detective work; the problem is too broadly stated.
A rather rigorous, Financial-sounding title for a high-concept line of thought ... Thanks to Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, for calling my attention to this article by Martin Fowler on Technical Debt: Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs…
Got a simple request from one of the folks in Operations; we're sending out Excel spreadsheets for some quick data gathering, might we do a little basic input validation before they send in garbage that needs to be scrubbed? This person is very sharp, knows a decent bit about what is possible, and this is definitely not something that is worth a major project engagement; "throwaway technology", a particular fave of mine. His request was simple - just want to…
I've been writing about iterative documentation and checklists, and it's easy to see how these are applicable to a number of common IT processes ... Build a server Apply OS patches Move new code into production Initiate a project / programming request Unfortunately, there are plenty of other areas in IT that you think should / could have a definable process ... yet there is always some magic to them, a variable recipe that's difficult to capture in a cookbook…
I've written before about process documentation and the need for checklists - especially for repeatable and complex processes that you may not perform every single day. A written process solves a multitude of issues: Security: For complex processes with integrated platforms, a detailed list keeps you from forgetting key settings, switches, and process steps that you might forget Reality: No matter how "advanced" or "highly engineered" these systems are, there is always something that must be done in just the…