Politically Correct Euphemisms in IT – Translated!

26 May, 2008
Communication
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I recently attended a professional seminar, and noticed a propensity for politically correct euphemisms to describe life in corporate IT. This was a typical group of IT professionals, representing a variety of companies - small and large, public and private. As with most group meetings, we started with a trip around the table; quick introductions, plus some highlights of "what's hot" for IT these days. The careful language wouldn't fool the experienced; however, a casual listener might see the knowing…

When is a project a Project? How to prevent the buildup of backlogged requests

I just wrote something up (internal wiki) that I thought was common knowledge, but I think it's one of those soft-skills things that makes total sense once you hear about it - but somebody needs to tell you. I think of one of the reasons that IT (at times) intimidates the business - or why IT gets the cold shoulder when it comes to process improvement efforts - is that we can get a bit too wrapped up in the…

Butting In to the Conversation: PM Communication Tools

Dennis McDonald and Lee White are conducting an interesting experiment on their blogs, crossposting a conversation about project management and social media. I'll add my voice, with both input on the topic and observations on the method. (Topic) The Right Tool for The Job - depends on the Job The first part of the conversation talks about whether social media could replace classic project management tools, in terms of communicating project status. I agree with Dennis - you can never…

How to Win at the PMO Prioritization Game

19 December, 2007
PMO, Communication
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Last time I talked about "cheating" at the PMO prioritization game. Ok, it wasn't cheating, more like a trick to keep your projects small, fast - and easy to fit into a crowded schedule. Totally above board, but some might call it manipulative. Remember the old management hack ... how do eat an elephant? If that's too cliche for you, let's talk about ways to consistently win at the prioritization game. How can you make sure your projects are legitimately…

Interesting How the Mind Works

My mother has always been an accomplished letter writer - her travelogues are definitely worth keeping. Lately, she's adapted her flair for the written word to email, having amassed a healthy mailing list of relatives, grandchildren, etc. Here's one she sent last month - I thought it was an interesting insight into the nature of learning. She's taking care of my aging grandmother, and writes ... ... when I was cleaning out mother's [room] ... I found a pile of…

Communication is the responsibility of …

Corporate Knowledge Management (KM) is hard. Hard to introduce, hard to teach/coach, hard to require, hard to create. Which, added all up together, often make it hard to use. It may sound like unfounded pessimism, as the Internet is loaded with examples of successful collaborative sites that aggregate and repackage knowledge - it's been doing that for years, ever since there were Compuserve forums and bulletin boards. Unfortunately (for the corporate environment), the Law of Large Numbers takes care of…

Thoughts on Why Tech Folks Need to Sweat the Administrivia Details

As I've noted in the past, it really helps to understand the techies' way of thinking, especially when trying to get work done on tasks that are decidedly non-technical. Here's two more recent stories from work, both hinging on the common desire to just "git'er done". Why do we waste time removing obsolete code? Just hide the menu option ... A few months ago, we had a task to decommission a chunk of code that was calculating some elapsed time information…

Marketing a Startup Business (3 of 3)

author's note: 3rd of 3 parts of an essay first published in 2000. Check out part 1 and part 2 ... jpm Address the Rest The elevator speech follows rather quickly from the executive summary. The power of this “sound bite” is in it’s clarity and consistency – make sure that everyone involved in the organization can deliver it the same way. Remember, in a small company, everybody is a salesman! Of course, the elevator speech should not be viewed…

Marketing a Startup Business (2 of 3)

author's note: 2nd of 3 parts of an essay first published in 2000. Check out part 1 here ... jpm Starting in the Middle To get moving on step 1 – capturing the “vision” – we’ll start in the middle with the executive summary. This presentation will help gather the relevant “what”, “why”, and “how”, without going into too much detail or oversimplifying. A little structure now will allow you to quickly summarize the salient points into your elevator speech…

Marketing a Startup Business (1 of 3)

author's note: I was recently asked about this essay, first published in 2000, so I thought I'd trot it back out as a series of posts. Written near the end of the dot-com boom, it still has some resonance, even with internal IT projects ... jpm Congratulations! Getting that terrific startup idea that has real business potential can be the easiest and the hardest part of going entrepreneurial. It’s fun to bat about ideas, look into new and exciting technologies,…