It’s been 16 years since I left the front of the classroom for a seat in a cube farm in IT, so I was excited when my son’s school asked me to chaperone a week-long trip to an environmental learning center. As I prepared for the trip, I deliberated about what pearls of wisdom I … Continued
It’s not unusual for a development team in a “highly regulated environment” to be steered away from agile methodologies and practices because of the perception that they are not a good fit. Preparing to work with auditors in these regulated environments (SOX, CFR, ISO, CMMI, etc.) usually means that an organization relies on well described … Continued
Taylorism was a popular management approach of the early 20th century applied to industrial and manufacturing organizations. Taylorism strived to break down work into small and repeatable tasks that could be taught to people even with limited education. Many companies still apply this approach today. Taylorism is focused on individual performance (i.e. How many widgets … Continued
Lately, the question I am asked the most (and it is not even close) by clients, co-workers, friends, family, etc. is “How is it going with the new owners?” I understand why, because two years ago when we were considering selling our life’s work to SQS, most people thought it would be a mistake. Their … Continued
AlphaGo is Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine aimed at tackling the world’s most demanding strategy game, Go. Google announced it is stepping down from competitive matches after defeating the world’s best talent. The latest to succumb was Go’s top-ranked player, Ke Jie, who lost 3-0 in a series hosted in China. The AI, developed by London-based DeepMind, which was acquired by Google for … Continued
Companies hire on resumes and fire on behavior. What if you could hire on predicted behavior? In the mid-19th century, the field of psychometrics was born, and we now have different survey tools to let us get-to-know our fellow man and ourselves better. I have tested many of these tools, yet often found myself frustrated … Continued
When I was a senior in college, my thoughts about salespeople altered radically. At that time, my definition of a person in sales was probably similar to many of yours: Salesperson (n) homemade defn: a person who tries to convince others to purchase goods or services that have little to no value – for the … Continued
A quick internet search of “Cargo Cult” will yield some interesting images, such as the image pictured right, which showed up near the top of my search. According to Wikipedia, “A cargo cult is a millenarian movement first described in Melanesia which encompasses a range of practices and occurs in the wake of contact with … Continued
