Most Recent Articles

Continuing Education Pareto Principle (50/30/20)

(okay, I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, just wanted to expound on the idea ...) Everyone's heard of Pareto's wonderful 80/20 rule. I've identified a variant of that rule that applies to all sorts of "continuing education" - like presentations at a trade conference, or skills training for new software packages. It really struck me when I was in grad school, slogging through Accounting and Business Law and marvelling at the range of difficulty in the two subjects…

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Driving to a Decision on your Projects

I've written about the basic project proposal (for consulting groups) or charter (for internal IT) in the past. The point of any project summary document is to tee up the what and the why, using an outline like this: Description: What are we trying to accomplish here? What is our ultimate goal? Objectives: These are project objectives, not business objectives. How will we know we are done? Benefits: Why should we consider doing this? What are we getting? Alternatives: Are…

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More on (sic) experience with wikis

no, that's not a typo ... Preamble: This starts out sounding like a diary entry, but some interesting wiki-focused observations are found below - including metrics! Catching up on old items in my feed reader: Back in November, TechCrunch had an item on AboutUs, which at first glance looked at little self-referential, a web site on web sites. Digging in a bit more - we find it's a wiki about web sites, which is still seemed a tiny bit redundant,…

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Defining an Effective IT Metrics Framework

Had a really good conversation about metrics the other day. We've been discussing ways to express how our systems are performing, delivering value, and staying available - and I'd like to use the same general structure for all systems, regardless of function (transactions, integrations, analytics) or platform (Wintel, AS/400, Open Systems). For each type of metric, we need to understand two dimensions: Performance against some Target. This can either be a baseline (a minimum or average expected score), or a…

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Another caveat for the erstwhile agile developer

If your objective is a "sense of urgency", or maybe "time to value", please don't think this gives you carte blanche to push patchy, chewing-gum-and-bailing-wire solutions out into production. Expect the expectation that the production systems' availability level must be maintained. Confused? It sounds like I'm taking two opposing sides ... I want speed and quality, and doesn't the Iron Triangle force you to pick between the two? It's possible, of course, you just need to practice a little discipline…

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A stunningly direct list, suitable for self-evaluations at year end

via Rothmann (who got it from Lester) - MacLeod's list (from the prolific Wade) ... The Career Manifesto (original here) Unless you’re working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut. Yes, your boss is an idiot at times. So what? (Do you think your associates sit around and marvel at your…

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Is there a Design Pattern for “Update else Add”?

They always say data conversions are a labor of love - you pour your heart and soul into the program, to get the most data converted as possible, and then, when you actually do run the code in production - it's a one time event; toss the source files in the bit bucket. Well, that's what it was [almost] like in my first job - we sold Property Management systems along with implementation services, and those services invariably included a…

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A great mission statement for Corporate IT

This is actually an old story, from a previous life, but I need to get back on the posting bandwagon. Way back in the day... ... there was a site on the public Internet with Company Confidential Information out there. The site was put together by an ambitious sales rep with some time on his hands, a few technical books, and a yen for something interesting to do. It was a nice little site, too - even had user ID…

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