kpmrd blog

Interesting blog article from Trello:  https://blog.trello.com/remote-team-communication-cheat-sheet . I particularly like the points on: Assume positive intent Don't rely on chat decision-making Don't keep your emotions on chat ... and be real: One of the failure modes of chat is treating it like Formal Communications, since it’s editable, its record persists (up to Mandated Retention Policy Period™) effectively forever, and it can be copied and pasted or grabbed as a screenshot. As far as I can tell this ends up in folks not having real conversations, or not giving the same amount of themselves they’d otherwise give in person.

Earlier in my consulting career, when arriving at a customer with one of my Directors to give a presentation, he stopped me and asked me "where are you going to sit?". We were in the days before projectors or screens, so I was going to be running from handouts. I hadn't given it much thought before then, but he gave me advice on where to sit. I think about it always now. Nowadays, I prefer to sit on the opposite side of the table from the door, towards a corner of the table facing down towards the presenter and the screen. And yes, you need to be in the room on time or early to choose. This article made me think of it:  Where to sit in a meeting ,  Joseph Crepaldi ,  LinkedIn.

I'm doing some work at the moment on project tollgates. We use the DSDM Atern Framework for delivering our projects, and in a recent all day workshop one of the concerns that came up was the handover from the sales team to the delivery team. Not a major concern - I've seen some teams where the gap between what was sold and the reality of what can be done has been monstrous. Here, fortunately, not the case. However, this seems to be a recurring question. What has the salesman agreed? My approach to a project delivery methodology has always been that the first phase of a delivery project is fundamentally to address that - the delivery team need to take ownership of the project, and make their own commitments to what can and cannot be done and by when. Call it Inception, Foundations, Blueprint - the effect is still the same. Not the best way to present it to a customer, but actually, a customer should be able to see the value of this first phase also - it aligns everyone's...

I have this habit of flying to and from Helsinki from Stockholm. The return flight from Helsinki is one of these interesting 'takes no time' flights - it takes an hour, and the timezone difference is an hour. At the start of the flight, the flight attendant tells you how long the flight will take - and says it will take fourty minutes. Then, when you 'leave' on time, and land fourty minutes later, they announce that you've 'arrived' ahead of schedule; as the flight was sold as taking sixty minutes. Some observations: What is the defined 'leaving' time. When the plane pushes back, I suppose. Not when it leaves the tarmac? What is the defined 'arrival' time? When the plane touches down, it would seem. Not when it parks at the gate, or when you disembark. I think those measurement points are subjective. What I'm really interested in is the point in time I need to be at the airport, and the point in time that I walk out of the oth...

There are lots of arcticles floating around the internet about how one can work smarter, get things done, have more fun doing them. Often I read them and think, "well, er yes, of course". Sometimes I read them and think "you're just having a laugh if you think that will work" - which notionally, it must be said, is a usual response to change, but still. However, I read this one, albeit with a fairly standard title, but it had some interesting ideas on how to get things done (and I don't mean, Get Things Done). Article " What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day " on Fast Company , by Kevin Purdy .

Here's an interesting article on the BBC about using flattery to get what you need in a business context - Superflattery: The art of getting what you want , by Lucy Kellaway from the Financial Times. In the article, the psychology of persuasion through flattery is discussed, and some hints presented on how to use it to persuade someone to do something you want that they don't necessarily want to do.

OK, it's not raining in this picture. It's been a bad day. And it's raining. What next? Have a beer? No. A 5k run. Probably followed by a beer, true. I live my life in balance! I've worn glasses for a very long time, and if you wear them too, you'll know that going for a run, or a hike, or a cycle or anything sort of outdoorsy in the rain, in glasses, is a bit of a no no. If you don't wear glasses, spare a brief minute to empathise on why I might be saying this. So one needs to make a choice on what to do in this situation: Option one: Run without glasses If you're only slightly blind like me, this is an option. Everything will be a bit of a blur, but you'll be able to see roughly where you're going. There will be times when you might get tripped up (I run in woods), but that's the risk. There will be times when you need to slow down and navigate carefully since you can't see clearly - down wet rocks, just for example, say. It...

That'll be a case of enough said, I think. (from Sober in a night club ) But, it makes an interesting point. There has always been the saying about statistics, but one used to draw them from 'reliable' sources. In the internet age... who are the reliable sources, and even then, are they just 'retweeting' an unreliable source?

' Old school tip ': When you've finished a conference call hang up. Then pick the line up again and check for the dial tone. Chances are there are as many different conference phones as there are conference rooms you'll see in a consulting career, and the only way to know the line is dead is to hear the dial tone of a clean line... think about what the first thing you say after a conference call is; then think about whether you'd want the other people who were on the call to hear it? From icanhascheezburger .

Don't use etcetera etc. in a specification document... From Sober in a nightclub .

With her hand in his hand, They were both happy again. You started taking sides. They started arguing. He said it was her fault. She said it wasn't at all. But the truth lies somewhere in the middle Kate Bush, Between A Man And A Woman, The Sensual World (1989)   When you take a look at it, and you think one thing, and they think something else, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Another image from one of the blogs I read.   From DeadDog . Now, let me state that some of the other posts at DeadDog are NSFW. And as for all blogs, they might apeal to your sense of humour or they might not, and sometimes the posts there appeal to my sense of humour and sometimes not. That's not my blog. There's probably another post to write about how to present other people's points of view without people necesarily believing they're your own - the Devil's advocate argument (and one that I often use myself in order for us to convince ourselves that we've got a good idea). That's another topic. But. Back to the above picture. It would be great to know the original context of it's existance. It looks like an installation somewhere. However it made me think - you're thinking about a new way to run the project. You're looking at a new opportunity. Do you stop to ask whether you should do it or not? Certainly make sure it's a good thin...

Maybe you've heard the Serenity Prayer...   God, grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; The courage to change the things that I can; And the wisdom to know the difference . Clearly there are religious conotations to this, not least the word 'prayer'. Let's park those, this is not a theology blog. Also, you may know that it is widely adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous as a 'motto'; which, I'll admit, kind of dents it for me, although a fair amount of IT management is done over a beer, so maybe it's not such an irrelevant fact. An internet search will give more origins of the prayer - Wikipedia cites the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as the author. Personally, I came across it as the first line on Sinead O'Connor's album 'I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got', and it's stuck in my mind ever since. So, how relevant is it to IT Management? Overlooking the religion of IT Management and the alcoholism that is required...

However much one learns how to do it, one just sees more to learn. The Delivery Method Definition will never be finished... just get more detailed and evolve.   From Abstruse Goose .

I enjoy walking - being outside, fresh air, clearing the head or thinking. I was taking a walk in a place just outside Stockholm that I know pretty well; I've been for several walks out there during the last summer. I know the paths and routes, so I didn't bother to take a map. Being an 'experienced' fell walker from back in England, I know one should always take a map; but this is a small area, and I know it well. Weather is changeable Anyone who does any amount of fellwalking will know that weather is changeable. Something that looked friendly and inviting can become unenjoyable and even dangerous very quickly. Take the right gear no matter what. Take a map. It's snowed a lot in Stockholm over the winter, and you'd be suprised how much it changes things if you didn't stop to think about it. The paths you know well are hidden, the route is different; sometimes impassable. The map helps you work out where you, and what options you have to go forwards....

I read an interesting article over on Rands's blog ( http://www.randsinrepose.com/ ) the other day. I thought, that's interesting; where should I store that so that I can come back to it when I need it? Favourties I 'favourite'd it in the RSS feed in google reader ( http://www.google.com/reader/ ). There's probably some very smart way in google reader of searching through such things for what you're remembering that you were looking for. Google is usually full of very smart things. Sometimes us mere mortals even find, understand and use them! Research Then, at a customer, I was asked about a certain type of software estimation method. Being a 'process monkey' I took a look through the internet at various random links to good looking weksites, cheap looking websites, people who seemed to know what they were talking about, and people who didn't. Just because you write it doesn't make it right - wikipedia is not a citeable source of the tru...