Thank you for signing up to give us early feedback on Google Wave. We're happy to give you access to Google Wave and are enlisting your help to improve the product. To accept your invitation, sign into Google Wave at the following link ... Well, maybe not the most exciting email I've received over the past few years, but it was nice to get the [sorta] early notice. I'm definitely in the second wave, but I'll not look a gift…
Where do these great analogy ideas come from? Full credit - I got this one from a speaker at the SAP Research Center in Palo Alto, last spring. A company is like a sphere. As it grows, volume increases much faster than surface area, and the larger a company gets, more people get embedded and hidden from the end customer than are on the fringe, in customer-facing roles. As a general rule, this is a bad thing. Well, maybe a…
I think this is one of those fundamental concepts that, once it is pointed out to me, become self-evident and obvious (ie. why didn't I think of that). I'm curious if other people agree ... When something is simple to describe, it is difficult to create. When something is difficult to describe, it is simple to create. I've seen these principles illustrated in different areas of business and technology; understanding this relationship can relieve frustration and provide hints on where…
The topic was training users for an upcoming project rollout, and the debate (as always) roamed back and forth between "traditional" (classroom training, scripts & workbooks) versus "experiential", pairing existing users with their counterparts (who are new to the system), walking through the basics (screen navigation, terminology, and step-by-step instructions for the most common required tasks). Training methods are a common area of debate and discussion with system implementation folks, and I can make a great case for any and…
I once met with a rather thoughtful Project Manager to catch up on things. An interesting person to talk to – it’s the cadence and style of his chat, he's a fairly laid-back guy. I asked where his Stress comes from - he shows no visible signs of any, and it made me Ponder. We ended up talking about golf, IT Projects, and the “Search for Perfection” in our work. So, what is “perfection” in the IT world? Is it…
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…
Introducing buzzword-compliant technology like a wiki, or integrated collaboration spaces like SharePoint, will typically go well with a motivated audience like your internal IT department. But if you really want to understand how this stuff works, try it with "real people" - line employees in sales and marketing, operations, and finance. Sure, you've heard complaints from these folks (they have better PCs at home, the SAP/Oracle UI is brutal compared to Amazon and AT&T U-Verse, and why can't they just…
Commiserating a week or so ago with an old friend, struggling mightily with some external consulting firm providing technology talent, developing customer management systems for Big Sales Company. There were some critical dependencies on the server side, and the (internal) project team needed some on-site assistance working through the issues. Ad hoc phone support was just not cutting it - but the external project lead was pushing back. It's very difficult to get on-site, dedicated help for these in-demand DB…
It is often said that you can't over-communicate, but I'm willing to bet most folks - and especially your project sponsors - underestimate the cost and effort of this critical component of project management. Consider this fair warning - and a good checklist for folks wanting to get into IT, project, or functional management. Media To achieve any decent amount of success, you have to be a good communicator with both face-to-face and written / published media. And by "good"…
Here is a simple question to ask yourself: do I insist on solving problems myself? A noble goal, until it takes too long to get the answer. Why don't we fail fast enough to ask the question to someone who knows? Remember, we pay a ton of money for annual maintenance to our enterprise software providers, so we should [more quickly] be "giving up", and submitting the question to the "experts" to get to answers quickly. In an earlier post,…