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…
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. …
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…
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?…
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…