Art

Data Visualization: How (2 of 2)

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 19, 2010 ⋅ 2 comments

The short answer, as you know, is that it’s impossible to tell you how to be insightful and imaginative in a single blog post. All I can do is point you in the general direction, and (hopefully) ignite a little spark. What’s the Goal? and, Where to Begin? I previously talked about the growing calls [...]

Data Visualization: Why (1 of 2)

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 13, 2010 ⋅ One comment

Between business requests and breathless vendors, I am getting caught up in the growing tide of interest in “data visualizations” – managers requesting highly interactive, highly graphical, highly intuitive analytics interfaces (think Minority Report). But what are we trying to accomplish here? We keep on hearing about “executive dashboards”, a heads-up display of in-my-face KPIs, [...]

Underwhelming experiences with Google Wave

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 17, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Took some time today to work with the new communication meme – Google Wave. I wouldn’t call it a fundamentally new way to communicate – well, not yet. I think Google is safe to continue with a “preview” label – clearly not even “beta” yet. No horrible bugs – at least on the Windows platform [...]

Frustrating Paradox: Simple and Difficult

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ September 1, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I think this is one of those fundamental concepts that, once it is pointed out to me, become self-evident and obvious (ie. why didn’t I think of that). I’m curious if other people agree … When something is simple to describe, it is difficult to create. When something is difficult to describe, it is simple [...]

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 [...]

Wikis in High School

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 3, 2009 ⋅ One comment

Last month, Vinson wrote about the use of wikis in school projects, and it reminded me to dust off some notes I took from a conversation with my daughter Sean MacLennan, late last year. It was a history project about World War II, and the class was asked to compose their reports on a wiki. [...]

Five Stages of Twitter Relevance

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ April 21, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I’m already fielding internal (as well as external) questions about the application of Twitter in a manufacturing company, and I’m developing a reasonably good model, I think – one that will apply to the hard-core, salt-of-the-earth, manufacturing business leader that I’ve worked with at many organizations. This “maturity model” approach has been used before; back [...]

Practical Innovation Lessons from Software Vendor R&D

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ April 16, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

I recently had the chance to listen in on a roundtable discussion involving a software developer’s R&D group, discussing some of their thoughts on architecture. Some interesting ideas around “innovation” …Innovation vs. Cost ControlA question from the floor – how sensitive are the R&D arms of major vendors to existing investments in infrastructure for their [...]

Field Notes: Video Conferencing for Business Conversations

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 22, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

This past week saw my first experience with video conference calling – something obvious to consider in these tight economic times. Some observations – I got quick feedback that my original camera position was disconcerting for the others. I had put it off to the side, which made me look “off camera”, almost in profile, [...]

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