Articles for category: Delivery

No Questions

When I give a presentation, a demo, a walkthrough, anything. If there are no questions, I get squared. Really, really squared. Because if there are no questions it means any of the following; I completely missed the mark and delivered the wrong content. The people in attendance do not care about what I am presenting or the content I am putting forth. No one understands what I have just said. They are confused. None of these are good responses. If you are assuming people are happy and satisfied with what you have just delivered ask yourself one question – when

July 8, 2021

Greg Thomas

Nobody Cares About the Process

Yes, having a process is good, it’s needed It’s what is going to make you a success and enable you to build a repeatable system that you can accrue economies of scale from. At the end of the day, that is the heart of a process, that is the reason we implement it – to get better. A process is the equivalent of a well-run practice designed to get you to learn a particular technique over and over again and make you get better at it. But you can’t hide behind it. You can’t hide behind the process when things

July 5, 2021

Greg Thomas

The Downward Delivery

At some point in a project, features will be cut (unless you have inifinite time, resourcs and absurdly patient customers). On a first release, it is inevitable – you’ve hit issues you didn’t expect, run up against the wall against problems you didn’t even know existed, when the user saw what they were getting they wanted to change things up, etc, etc. The list goes on. When this happens, the question that everyone has to keep asking themselves should always be the same… Does this weaken our delivery? It’s not an easy question to ask (it’s not supposed to be),

July 2, 2021

Greg Thomas

My Part is Done

This is one of those knives through the heart type of thing. You have a team working towards a delivery, everyone has their piece that they are responsible for. At the meeting to discuss where things are on the deliverable, the team clearly has a lot left to do and is working through how they are going to accomplish that. You’ve just gone through all the issues when someone chimes in – “My part is done, so there is nothing left to do for me.” When the team is struggling, there is always work left to do. The team delivers

July 1, 2021

Greg Thomas

Why are we here?

Wow, what a way to start a meeting. Why are we here? I had someone ask this at a meeting today and instantly felt like leaving. If you are leading a meeting, if you are in charge of a meeting and you don’t know why you have assembled people here. Than cancel the meeting. Not because they aren’t ready, but because you aren’t.