A Business Technology Place (Since 2008)
A few weeks ago I read a passage from John Maxwell in his book The Maxwell Daily Reader about scurvy. The passage summarizes difficulties in implementing the cure for the prevention of the disease during the time of European exploration of the Americas. Multiple sources knew about the effect of Read More …
We need more people. We don’t have enough resources. Every week I hear about the conflict between the number of employees in the organization and the amount of work to do. The underlying presumption is the organization can accomplish more by adding more people. The problem with this rationale is Read More …
A note from my Lean journey A few years ago I was introduced to Lean concepts and principles at work. After several months of studying the topic I realized that many of my professional activities for both managing processes and people already mapped to some of the core components of Read More …
I don’t travel on airplanes often. For me this is a good thing. The airport routines of parking, security checkpoints, boarding, and rental cars typically leave me feeling like herded cattle. For the most part, all the players involved in each of these steps do a good job moving masses Read More …
Part 3 of 3 – The Truth is…. I’ll share some truths about developers, managers, and processes in IT. Writing about processes in business and technology has a gravitational-like pull. I’ve written more on the topic of technology processes than any other topic since I began blogging in 2008. Some Read More …
A tribute to the never ending projects. You know those projects that seem to never end. The projects that extend well past their anticipated delivery dates. The projects that can’t catch a break or that can’t find sustained momentum. These are the projects that become the monkeys on our backs. Read More …
The first value statement in the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. Mike McLaughlin, of Version One, questions the role and influence the growing agile tool set has on individuals and interactions. McLaughlin states that the capability of Agile based software tools adds scalability and efficiencies, Read More …
We have a love-hate relationship with steering committees. Do committees provide value that pays for the amount of overhead they create in workflows? If you are a committee member with voting privileges then the tendency is to support and agree with the both the decisions and procedural steps the committee Read More …
What is an acceptable amount of time that a business process or model is in place before we can challenge the assumptions and basis for it? Maybe this would be a good exam question in a MBA class. Answers are sure to vary and elicit a number of opinions. But Read More …
What’s the goal of your organization? Do this. Ask executives in your business what the goal of the business is. Is it to make market leading products and services? Is it to make and serve customers? Or is it really to make money? Eliyahu M. Goldratt writes in his book Read More …
Some people depend on the process for making results. I was involved in a situation recently where a software defect was found after the production release. A team member was quick to analyze the situation and indicated that the team had not followed all the steps in the process. They Read More …
This past week I challenged a couple of existing business processes. One thing that I’ve never understood about business environments is why people and management continue to require and support processes that don’t add value to the service and production output of the organization. I think most people prefer to Read More …
Starting a new year is the most popular time to create and install plans. This is true within our personal lives and within our businesses. In business, we spend hours creating plans for how to meet financial and operational goals for the year. Then we spend more time rolling out Read More …
We’ve all been there. Something goes wrong and as a follow-up we look for the root cause and how to prevent it from happening again. More times than not, we solve this procedure by adding another step to an existing process. It’s almost automatic and we don’t think twice about Read More …
Earlier this week I had lunch with @Cjack_HC, @ElliotLeson, @Westdene64, and a few others. I joined the lunch late as the group was in the middle of a brainstorming session on creating names for business card designs. Sounds easy, but I found the task pretty challenging. It made me think Read More …
In my undergraduate days at Georgia Tech there was a bumper sticker that said “Georgia Tech – We don’t fit the mold, we make it.” This slogan certainly has relevancy in the engineering discipline, but I think it also has application in the business world for process management. The question Read More …
If you have read any of my previous blog posts, you’ll know that I’m all about business process management and efficiency. For better or worse, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about how organizations produce work. A common framework for many businesses to produce software releases is to Read More …
The concept of eliminating things from our lives in order to have more in life is one that I’ve seen in several self-help, personal productivity, and spiritual guides. Michael Card wrote a song about it named Things we leave behind in which he says “It’s hard to imagine the freedom Read More …