Tech Management

Buzzword Management ABCs

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 16, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

A bit of Friday fun … I was at a trade show a few weeks ago, and noticed a repeating pattern on many slides. I’ve heard this in vendor pitches and internal presentations as well – every piece of software and/or process must be for the management of something. So, as I sat trapped in [...]

Thoughts on Why Tech Folks Hate Documentation

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 8, 2006 ⋅ 4 comments

I’ve had some flashes of insight on why technical folks don’t like to document stuff. Currently, I’m thrashing thru a skunkworks project that is evolving into something that will need to be reasonably available, robust, etc. I’m also trying to lead by example; I ask my teams to build for sustainability and document so they [...]

Subdivide a huge project list to simplify the prioritization process

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 27, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

A classic problem for many project-oriented organizations (IT, R&D, Engineering, Operations) … how can resource prioritization be simplified, yet repeatable? It’s a fairly involved topic, but a common approach is to group projects into a workable number of “chunks” … we’ll use the term Initiatives. How will this help? Challenge: Clarify the team’s priorities, alignment, [...]

You can run but you can’t hide

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ September 5, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

I sent out notes to folks talking about my new situation, and some came back with interesting comments. Here’s one from W, a brilliant guy with Big-6 background and plenty of business acumen. However, he (like me) is a coder at heart, and really wants to focus on the technology (not like me). More power [...]

Turning a new page, and working on that home development environment

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 27, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

It’s vacation / pseudo-unemployment time for me, as I’ve made a career move to another company (spending a week between gigs). It’s a nice step up, and definitely will take me a bit farther away from the hands-on work I periodically enjoyed at my previous employer; on the other hand, it will get me back [...]

How Fun – Timesheets

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ June 27, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

In the early part of the year, we tracked our time as a group using timesheets. We don’t use these to justify our payroll or anything, just an exercise to validate that we were properly apportioning our time across multiple demands. Also, we wanted to help explain why it takes more than one week of [...]

Chicken and egg aggravating? Just start somewhere …

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ April 23, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Conversations this week with folks in multiple, different organizations I have connections to, about formal change controls. The general rule, especially for the non-public companies, seems to be reasonable levels of process, but not as well documented, automated, and not as rigidly enforced as the more rigorous among us would prefer. It was interesting talking [...]

If you want to be more than a programmer, stop programming

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ April 8, 2005 ⋅ One comment

A lot of talking with the team yesterday, and I have a sore throat because of it – but we covered some pretty key concepts, stuff that is hard to reconcile in many tech staffers’ minds, but must be dealt with. One conversation covered this person’s desire to be thought of / leveraged as “more [...]

I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ April 6, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

(attrib) I was in a meeting yesterday – first time with this particular group of folks, all at same time, on this topic, although I had already established a working relationship with all. Anyway, subject matter was one that most of them had talked about at length over the past few weeks, but I was [...]

Communicating Complex Technical Concepts

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 21, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

We’ve faced this problem a few times, as we roll out a distributed application across a network of remote locations. A fairly typical challenge is to explain the impact of a technical architecture improvement in a relevant, meaningful way – without resorting to techno-jargon. A good approach includes: Keep it short – Too much detail [...]

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