Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• A Case Study: A Business Analyst on an Agile Project

  For analysts new to agile this article provides a good overview showing that it is the same, but different to more traditional projects....

• LinkedIn Labs | InMaps - Visualize your LinkedIn network

  Very cool.

• Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China | Video on TED.com

  Not my favourite economist (ex editor of Marxist Today), but a timely reminder about the coming role of China.

• Business-IT: Strategischer Partner mit Mehrwert / Deloitte-Studie zur Entwicklung der IT in Unternehmen zeigt ein erweitertes Rollenverständnis | Deloitte | Presseportal.de

• The A-B-C of Behaviour - Johnny Holland – It's all about interaction

  Nice overview on changing behaviours for designers

• Accenture_Everything_Elastic_Technology_Vision.pdf (application/pdf Object)

  As much as it pains me to post the competition, this is a nice summary of Accenture thinking on the trends last year (and they were largely right).

• heise online - BPMN 2.0 für eine bessere Zusammenarbeit zwischen Fachabteilung und IT

  I really hope that the heise-editors are right and BPMN 2.0 does get established more universally on the business as well as IT side.. but I am not holding my breath.

• Cool Infographics - Blog - The Illusion of Diversity: Visualizing the Soft Drink Industry

• Worlds Top Leadership Gurus Speakers Trainers Leadership Development

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• YouTube - Tribal Leadership

  GoogleTalk on Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan - not sure I would buy the book based upon this, but it he has some interesting ideas

• The Rise And Fall Of Yahoo: The Infographic

• How Facebook Ships Code « FrameThink – Frameworks for Thinking People

  Some fascinating insights into software engineering and product development and facebook - even if only part of this is true it sounds like a developers fantasy.

• 11 Types of Analytics for 2011 « Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog

  Nice overview of types of web analytics tools

• GazeHawk - Eye Tracking For Everyone - Usability Services & Software

  Have had good experience with eye-tracking in general. I like the look of this offering - good pricing and looks like a reasonable reporting suite. Would be interested in any feedback people have.

• 2010's 25 Top Posts On The Forrester Blog For Interactive Marketing Professionals | Forrester Blogs

• The Sequel Map – Which Sequels Were Better or Worse Than the Original? — BoxOfficeQuant

  Just another nice data graphic - guess what - sequels are mostly worse than the original - probably not really a learning that requires a info-graphic, but it does look good...

• Book Review: The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist :: UXmatters

  Any book by Brooks is worth reading - this is definitely going on my reading list.

• Design Thinking | Employing Design Principles | Defining Ease of Use :: UXmatters

  A nice overview with some good links on design thinking

• End_of_Year_Letter_2011_technology.pdf

  Less succinct than the telco paper of (practically) the same name, but also pretty good. Once again, no real new insights, but a few nice facts on cloud computing and M&A in the technology sector.

• End_of_Year_Letter_2011_telecom.pdf

  A nice summary of the trends in the telco industry for the operators - nothing new, but succinctly put.

• Exciting Commerce: Businessmodelle für Fortgeschrittene: Die Erfinder-Bibliothek

  Links to a few interesting books on business modelling

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• The Agile Business Analyst: Seeing the Forest, The Trees, and the Grass…Mostly the Grass! | Robert Galen

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

And so the year begins..

Sitting in Heathrow Terminal 5, waiting with a growing sense of gloom as the Departures board stubbonly refuses to post the gate to Duesseldorf, I think that I need something to take my mind off the delay to my flight that is inevitably coming; some New Year resolutions.

Some may recall, that last year I resolved only to improve the quality of meetings that I organised. Though it is for others to judge, I feel that I have been reasonably rigorous in applying the common sense rules, that we all know, but fail to apply to make sure that meetings are not a waste of time:

• No meeting without an agenda in advance (and that means with owners, objectives and timings - see entries on the Manager-Tools effective meeting protocoll, EMP for short - see here for previous posting on this).
• Prepare for meetings, thinking about what it is you actually want to achieve.
• Start and finish on time (and postpone/rearrange if necessary)... OK, this is one that I have not been entirely successful with for other peoples' meetings, but my own I have pretty much kept in plan.
• Meetings without agreed actions are just nice chats - "who does what by when?"
• Follow up on actions consistently ("duh, of course", as my younger brother would say, but if we are honest, it is this point that is almost always lacking).

Since, I was reasonably successful on this front last year, I am keeping my (professional and publishable ;-)) resolutions slimline once again:

1. Apply the principles to all meetings I attend rather than just my own - I think this is going to be really tough, but hopefully worth the effort.
2. Use the time available to me for work effectively - As with the EMP, it is a "no-brainer" to wish this, but how many truly prioritise work items appropriately consistently (I consider myself to be pretty good at this, but I certainly cannot say that I *always* apply rules a la Drucker's "The Effective Executive" - see also previous postings from me on this) and perhaps even more critically in the consulting industry, how many properly plan enough time for the different types of activity (and in particular thinking time)? A smart colleague picked me up on this last week - when do you do your thinking, he asked. My immediate response was, "19:00-20:00 and after 22:00". Though accurate, I do believe that a better response would involve some working hours and this leads to point 3.
3. Sleep more ... see the recent TED posting on this topic.

I hope I will be able to post a similarly positive update 1 year from now. We shall see. Wish me luck.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• Cool Infographics - Blog - The Ride of Your Life

• E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: The Towering E-Commerce 3.0 Wave

  Ignore the title and it is a pretty succinct blog entry on ecommerce organisation within traditional companies

• Epic Win - Level-Up Your Life

  Another example of gaming technology being used to change behaviours in the real world. Will try this one out for sure...

• European Multi-Client Retail Mass Market Benchmark 2010

  Some nice stats on retail mass market

• InfoQ: IT And Architecture: Inside-Out Perspectives

• The Relevance of User Experience: Using Every Opportunity to Impress Users | UX Booth

  Good anecdotes for the value of user experience for non-converts...

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.