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Jim MacLennan

Jim MacLennan has written 371 posts for cazh1
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Idle Time is a Good Thing for IT

By ⋅ March 20, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Lots of good conversations recently about managing IT, Finance, and other constrained resources for projects. We have implemented tools to model available time; when trying to understand what new work can get added to the pile, it helps immeasurably when you understand how much time you have available, plus what else has been committed. This [...]

The Hegemony of Large Numbers – Ignoring Common Sense

By ⋅ February 28, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Ok, maybe I’m stretching the meaning there, but that’s a cool sounding title, and what I see as an interesting phenomenon. People get excited about Large Numbers, and think they have meaning and importance simply because they are Large Numbers. Big Errors For example – years ago, when an application manager was whirling around the [...]

Twitter and the First Amendment

By ⋅ February 21, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Apparently, 2011 is the year when Twitter, Facebook, and smartphone videos are graduating from Social Networking toys to evolutionary, revolutionary Sociology tools. Can they be controlled by governments or big business? It’s been argued that any such controls might run afoul of Amendment No. 1 from our Bill of Rights … how amazing for a [...]

Market Driven Data Quality (Data Darwinism)

By ⋅ February 19, 2011 ⋅ One comment

Just trying a little contrarian thought this week … Have you ever noticed how much time and energy goes in to data validation? I think it stems from visual forms development and the wide variety of clever data entry controls that are available – everyone wants to write an app that gets the oooo, cool! [...]

Vintage Technology

By ⋅ February 9, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Here’s one of those videos making the rounds via eMail. I found this in my inbox at work, from an observant friend who apparently likes the same web sites I do (although I had originally this as a great example of minimalist site design). It’s interesting to note how the magical becomes the mundane. I [...]

Chargebacks vs. Allocations – Defining IT’s Relationship with the Business

By ⋅ January 16, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Some IT departments prefer chargebacks, while others do not. My own preference is to allocate IT costs to the business units, based on some reasonable balance of simplicity and accuracy. General services could be allocated by headcount, COGs, or revenues, with each business unit taking their proportional share. Some easily identifiable items might be allocated [...]

Estimating Bird-Dogging Time for Project Tasks

By ⋅ January 9, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

New year, new projects, and new adventures in getting folks to think in project management terms. I’ve written before about Calendar time vs. Effort time, but this past week we came up with a new distinction that is worthwhile to call out. When working with the business and getting folks to estimate how much time [...]

Fun with Ngrams – Art, Science, Programming

By ⋅ December 19, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

A recent gift from Google Labs – the NGram viewer, a fascinating tool that searches the Google Books database for words and phrases, and charts their relative frequency. For example – let’s take some of the themes of this blog … Apparently, Art and Science have grown closer, and enjoy a somewhat parallel existence together. [...]

Learning About Data Visualization

By ⋅ December 5, 2010 ⋅ 2 comments

Even though there is an art to visualization design, it stands to reason that this is a skill that can be taught / learned. I remember going to campus visits with my daughter, and hearing about a textbook considered to be a timeless classic – teaching students how to draw. What a concept – I [...]

Art and Science of Data Visualization (Part 2)

By ⋅ November 14, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Just a little more theory and background on Data Visualization, to eat up the rest of your weekend. Unlike the McCandless video, this video will take some time investment – but well worth it, if you want to charge your batteries on this topic. (via Flowing Data) From earlier this year, Martin Wattenberg gives a [...]

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