Articles for category: Delivery

November 22, 2021

Greg Thomas

Caveats for Success

I did a presentation a little while ago that was a deep dive analysis on the probability of delivery of across a variety of factors. It looked pretty good on paper but then we got to the last page with all the caveats. Numbers are good, but caveats drive it home. Caveats are everything that needs to be in place for you to be a success, for you to align your team, for you to make things happen, and actually give this plan a shot at success. Caveats are the baseline for your success and if you don’t know what

November 18, 2021

Greg Thomas

The Plan Takes Time

I used to work with someone who had an email signature that read – “Your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency on my part”. When I would be up late fixing bugs, I would come back to this line and think about this line – “whose emergency is this?”. You can’t plan for everything, but you can plan for your need. I recently finished a month-long planning and strategy session with a client.  At the end of it, they wanted all the answers, all the plans, everything laid out from them from A to B.  I sensed this,

November 17, 2021

Greg Thomas

Leaving the Meeting

When people were absolutely fed up with a meeting, they would physically get and leave the room. That was a sign, a sign that the meeting was so far gone that there was no point in continuing.  It was a physical action and reaction that made people pause and wonder what just happened. We don’t have that in remote meetings. People are always disconnecting – because connections everywhere are strained. People are always turning their video off – because there are kids and family running in the background. People mute themselves – because they are trying to get a bite

November 16, 2021

Greg Thomas

But do we all agree?

I’ve been in a few meetings over the past few months where a question is asked (a simple one, i.e., where we are at), and the responses are varied from all points of the delivery. This is good to have varying responses, however, the problem is that they don’t have anything to tie each other together. What are we releasing? When are we releasing it? What are the most important issues? Does the customer agree? These are the core threads that can pull those responses together so that when the discussion goes around the room another time, we have a

November 15, 2021

Greg Thomas

But will it Survive the Upgrade?

I like the idea of auto-updates, when enabled, nothing gets left behind. The days of – “oh wait, you haven’t updated your server for the last five months” – are no longer conversations we need to have. I remember doing those “patch” nights where we would sit there and talk while someone patched the next server, then the next one, then waited for the next round of updates to come down, so we could do the next one, then the next one, and on and on. Auto-Updates are great, as long as they always work and self-correct when there are

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