Communication

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” [...]

Politically Correct Euphemisms in IT – Translated!

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 26, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

I recently attended a professional seminar, and noticed a propensity for politically correct euphemisms to describe life in corporate IT. This was a typical group of IT professionals, representing a variety of companies – small and large, public and private. As with most group meetings, we started with a trip around the table; quick introductions, [...]

When is a project a Project? How to prevent the buildup of backlogged requests

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 22, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

I just wrote something up (internal wiki) that I thought was common knowledge, but I think it’s one of those soft-skills things that makes total sense once you hear about it – but somebody needs to tell you. I think of one of the reasons that IT (at times) intimidates the business – or why [...]

Communication is the responsibility of …

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ August 19, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Corporate Knowledge Management (KM) is hard. Hard to introduce, hard to teach/coach, hard to require, hard to create. Which, added all up together, often make it hard to use. It may sound like unfounded pessimism, as the Internet is loaded with examples of successful collaborative sites that aggregate and repackage knowledge – it’s been doing [...]

Driving to a Decision on your Projects

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 11, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

I’ve written about the basic project proposal (for consulting groups) or charter (for internal IT) in the past. The point of any project summary document is to tee up the what and the why, using an outline like this: Description: What are we trying to accomplish here? What is our ultimate goal? Objectives: These are [...]

Making the internal pitch? Learn from the entrepreneurs

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 10, 2005 ⋅ One comment

This article (see also here) led me to this next one (access limited by subscription, sorry) in Business 2.0, about making an effective pitch for a new business plan. The same tactics can and should be used when moving projects and initiatives forward in an “internal”, corporate setting. Bullets from the article … Elevator Pitch [...]

Need to watch my terminology

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ August 16, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Need to watch my terminology I find myself referring to manufacturing plants as “stores” – I’ve just left a rollout to a bunch of retail stores / branches / locations, and had been immersed in that terminology for many months. So, when I go to meetings these days, and start referring to what folks are [...]

Managing by letting go

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 26, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Over the past months, some folks pointed out that I have a very loose management style (at times). I really like to let go of the reins, watch folks go where they want – for a while, at least. One effective way to do this is to just say nothing in a meeting. IAPL, we [...]

Sometimes analogies work amazingly well …

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 14, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

… and sometimes they don’t – the ever-popular construction analogy for describing the software development process has many areas where it works .. and then, if you push it too far, sort of falls apart. Still, when communicating with business / process owners that don’t necessarily understand the unique qualities of technology projects, to whom [...]

Tech shorthand, a minor interest

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ June 3, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

I haven’t seen this in anything Exchange or Outlook on my desktop, but this Microsoft story about OOF caught my fancy. I’ve always been a fan of techie jargon (ref the mother lode), my lastest fave being the YA prefix, as in Yet Another … The one that has always stuck in my head was [...]

Categories