Communicating Complexity

Art and Science of Data Visualization

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 7, 2010 ⋅ One comment

“Data Visualization” has been an extremely active and popular topic for a few years – we can use Google’s Timeline search feature to see the growth in interest since 1980: That local high in July of this year was due in no small part to David McCandless’ Information is Beautiful talk at TED this past [...]

Sorting with Sound

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ August 23, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

via Geek.com – yes, I subscribe to stuff like this in my RSS reader … I thought this was interesting on two levels … The Engineering student within appreciates the differences in sorting techniques (although I think I could speed up that bubble sort …) I also think these videos provide a simple illustration of [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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” [...]

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 [...]

Customer DNA – A Different Take on Understanding Markets and Networks

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ June 11, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

My blogroll includes tech-focused blogs as well as general business sites (along with some humor). It’s an interesting cross section, that allows me to see a wide variety of reactions to news such as MacTel, Office XML, Offshoring, and other things. The variety reminded me of an old thought exercise I led at a previous [...]

Excellent series of posts for PMs communicating with non-techs

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

I just scanned this really terrific series of posts by Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change – talks about “managing programmers”, but it’s quite insightful for a project manager or development lead trying to understand how they may be perceived by the business and management communities: Part 1, on the programmer-speak, is yet-another take on [...]

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 [...]