Execution

Managing Change: Knowing, Understanding, Empathizing

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

Do you know your job, or do you really understand your job? One difficult part of change is getting people to see the difference. Of course, this is seriously delicate stuff – you can’t just walk in and ask people if they understand what they are doing. You know you’d be insulted if someone asked [...]

Managing Change: Pick Something, and Do It Well

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 14, 2010 ⋅ 2 comments

This is the first in an series of posts on Managing Change … look for more over the course of the next few weeks … A common way of expressing the holistic nature of a project is to talk about “People, Process, and Technology”. I’m not sure who came up with this little gem, or [...]

IT Budget Hacking (w$$t)

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 2, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Some block-and-tackle IT management stuff for today – taking a long, hard look at the IT budget, a task that is less-than-pleasant for many. Most of my peers have already cut any and all low hanging fruit – it’s time to start thinking aggressively. Software Maintenance for the Small Stuff Most have concentrated on their [...]

Failing Faster

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ June 14, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Here is a simple question to ask yourself: do I insist on solving problems myself? A noble goal, until it takes too long to get the answer. Why don’t we fail fast enough to ask the question to someone who knows? Remember, we pay a ton of money for annual maintenance to our enterprise software [...]

Would you like me to google that for you?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 12, 2009 ⋅ One comment

Got some rare Re-Tweets today on a techie insult – so snappy, I had to write a post to use it for a title! Deep in the problem analysis and debugging process, the typical IT hack experiences counter-balancing pressures that impact decision making – Capable Independence vs. Speed to Value. Capable Independence is just fancy-talk [...]

PMO Nirvana is a Conversation, not a Schedule

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

We continue to iterate on our PMO processes – managing too few resources and too many project requests, an environment I have consistently seen in every IT group I have ever worked with. Our latest discussion concerned the concept of FIFO work on projects … … when presented with five things to do, I will [...]

Is SharePoint WSS dangerous to SharePoint contractors?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 5, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Firing Up Internal Opportunity It was true last year, but even more so now; SharePoint is very important for corporate IT, both strategically (medium- and long-term) and tactically (short-term). Sure, it’s a terrific way to iterate on collaboration, internal portals, document management, etc. – “enabling innovation” in every buzzword-compliant sense. But there is solid benefit [...]

Best Practices for Requirements Gathering Sessions

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ December 7, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve led an interactive requirements session for an interactive application – but it’s kind of like riding a bike. After a few minutes, the old habits come back, and the iterative ideas and cascading creativity starts to flow. What has changed, however, is the application platform, the office environment, and [...]

Field Notes: Lean Times for IT Services

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 29, 2008 ⋅ One comment

I know it’s lean times in IT, and product / services vendors are all beating the bushes. Some interesting patterns have emerged over the last few months … My Boss Is In Town: This is far and away the #1 meme / structure of incoming cold calls; I get a (very) brief synopsis of services/value [...]

On the Road: Business Travel, Fall 2008

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 13, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

I don’t travel a significant amount in my current position, but when I do, it seems to come in chunks. I’m about half way through a round of travel this fall – mostly business, but with some personal travel mixed in. Six cities, three countries in less than four months. Some observations at the halfway [...]

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