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Jim MacLennan

Jim MacLennan has written 388 posts for cazh1
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PacMan at MoMA – Interaction Design

By ⋅ June 16, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

One of the benefits of ditching cable and going to internet streaming TV is that I’m watching more TED talks for a mental stretch break. True, I’m missing half of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but I catch stuff like this from Paola Antonelli, on bringing video games to New York’s Museum of Modern Art … [...]

Impressive Networking Success Metrics for a Current Job Search

By ⋅ May 25, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

No, not mine! When talking with folks searching for their next job, I always stress “old-school” networking – face-to-face conversations to get that next introduction, leverage the other person’s network, generate leads on positions, or introductions to more folks that might be able to help. I am definitely a fan, I know it’s a powerful [...]

SQDC for Enterprise IT – Cost, Next Steps (3 of 3)

By ⋅ April 20, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

Cost At once the most and least understood, the Cost section is what everybody focuses on (specifically: cost reduction!) but also what controls our ability to do more project and support work with the resources in Enterprise IT. The sample graph show 13 months – we are including Dec 2012 just to get a decent [...]

SQDC for Enterprise IT – Quality, Delivery (2 of 3)

By ⋅ April 14, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

Second in a series of posts on presenting a summarized view of Corporate IT using SQDC-style KPIs; in this post, I’ll explain the metrics we use to express Quality and Delivery. Quality I’ve seen a range of KPIs in the Quality column on different manufacturing plants’ SQDC boards, but nothing as consistent as the Safety [...]

SQDC for Enterprise IT – Introduction, Safety (1 of 3)

By ⋅ April 11, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

For the last few months at our Executive Staff Meeting, I’ve been presenting a summarized view of what is happening in IT – and stealing ideas from the many Daily Management boards that I’ve seen during my visits to the plants. I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on the SQDC graphics that I’m using; [...]

Innovating with Ideas – Real World Remixing

By ⋅ April 7, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

Three good stories from the past week – great for me, since I am hearing feedback and “remixing” for things published here on this blog. But good, because they are nice examples of people taking ideas and tweaking them to fit their particular situation: Phil saw my presentation earlier this year on IT Strategy, and [...]

A Practical Reason for Moving Beyond Smart Part Numbers

By ⋅ March 28, 2013 ⋅ 2 comments

During a process review session this week, I got involved in a terrific conversation about Smart Part Numbers. You know what I’m talking about – those cryptic SKU identifiers so popular with the folks in the warehouse, on the shop floor, in production planning. There is logic and structure to the characters and the numbers, [...]

Suburban Robots that Monitor Reality (The Internet of Things)

By ⋅ March 13, 2013 ⋅ 5 comments

Another month, another presentation – something I am trying to do more of this year, somewhat to the detriment of my blog post frequency. However, I may have one or two new posts to put together based on the content of this deck. Here’s a link to the slides I am presenting this week (Thursday [...]

IT Strategy for the Fast Twitch Crowd

By ⋅ February 10, 2013 ⋅ One comment

This evening (Monday, 11 Feb 2013) , I did a presentation on Developing IT Strategy in a “Consumer IT” Environment – an expansion on some of the ideas that I have written about previously. I’ve posted my slides here – I realize that they do not “stand on their own”, and need some explanation, but if you weren’t in [...]

Ten Bucks in Ten Minutes

By ⋅ February 6, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

I really do like networking events – group meetings with other with other IT professionals, discussing topics of common interest, with a reasonable amount of vendor / consultant-sponsored gentle selling, and/or some solid job networking with fellow techs looking for their next successful step along the career path. However, I  admit to a wee bit [...]

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