Communication

How to Draw an Owl

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 15, 2011 ⋅ One comment

On Documentation One recent afternoon I found myself in deep conversation with potential consulting partners, holding out for a difficult requirement: “Excellent Documentation”. That’s a tough one to quantify, let alone describe; why hold out for something at once critical and ineffable? Doesn’t every project talk about the importance of providing documentation, yet rarely deliver [...]

A Nice Knock-Down Argument

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ April 20, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Sales and the Gantt “Why exactly does he want to meet again?” I could sense the exasperation in Karl’s voice, faintly; the sales manager wasn’t about to slip out of his professional demeanor over some perceived technical triviality. But for the fact that the request was coming from his newly-hired PMI maven, he probably would [...]

The Hegemony of Large Numbers – Ignoring Common Sense

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ 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 [...]

Business Proposals and The Lesson of Jabberwocky

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 28, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

When someone asks my opinion on their writing, I’ll get fairly detailed; I’ve noted in the past that there is a lot of power and influence in the written word, and it’s fairly important to get it done well, or your project proposals just never seem to get off the ground. This particular proposal suffered from [...]

Technical Debt and the Cost/Benefit of Knowledge Retention

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 27, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

A rather rigorous, Financial-sounding title for a high-concept line of thought …Thanks to Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, for calling my attention to this article by Martin Fowler on Technical Debt: Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick [...]

Over / Under Communication for Project Managers

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ June 29, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

It is often said that you can’t over-communicate, but I’m willing to bet most folks – and especially your project sponsors – underestimate the cost and effort of this critical component of project management. Consider this fair warning – and a good checklist for folks wanting to get into IT, project, or functional management. Media [...]

News for Wombats: Taming Unreasonable Requirements

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 26, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I’ve heard from a couple of friends about some “classic” project requests – dilemmas they have recently faced. These unreasonable requests can be turned into something achievable and, potentially, more relevant / meaningful to the requestor, by approaching the problem from a different direction. Request for Data: the Analytics Project Classic scenario #1 arrives courtesy [...]

A Plea for Empathetic Communication

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 17, 2008 ⋅ One comment

It’s impossible to over-communicate Sounds a bit strong, but if you think through your real-world experiences, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. No matter how hard you try, your message will be missed by someone … Problem: It’s all their fault! Rely on Web 2.0, and … … they won’t subscribe to the RSS feed; they don’t [...]

Don’t Accept Snap Answers Too Quickly

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 6, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

A few years ago, I was working on an interface project, and wanted to have the ERP system send copies of any and all transactions that have changed over the past few days. I’ve done this before on other platforms, so I asked the lead developer what I thought was a no-brainer request: Do the [...]

Can you, should you, bother Executives with The Details?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 30, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

In a recent post on Thinking Faster, Phillips expresses concern about the apparent propensity for project sponsors to skim over the details and jump to quick answers. He’s talking about [what I believe is] a peer relationship, when external expertise is brought in to develop the solution that they (the sponsors) are responsible for “owning” [...]

Communication

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