Showing posts with label online resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online resources. Show all posts
Monday, 7 January 2013
Service Design Tools resource
http://www.servicedesigntools.org is a great set of nicely presented introductory tools for use in service design. For experienced CE professionals there is nothing really new here, but it has been put together beautifully and there are some good examples/case-studies that are always excellent food-of-thought!
Friday, 4 January 2013
Some great social media statistics
The imagery on visual.ly is getting a little homogeneous, but is still full of content. The graphic below contained sufficient statistics for me to consider it worth posting in full - it seems as a male pinterest user I am in the minority!
On a more serious note though, if you ever needed any justification for getting moving on operationalising your company's social media strategy, look no further than these stats and what they mean for you and your competitiors in 2013.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
"The" 3-Ps of entrepreneurship
I finally caught up with a few of my podcast subscriptions this weekend. One that got me thinking was from the University of Stanford - the "Entrepreneurship thought leadership" lecture series. I have been following it for several weeks; each lecture is with another entrepreneur and, it being Stanford, they have had an impressive collection of names, but the last week's with Steve Case (ex-CEO of AOL) was particularly interesting.
He spent most of his time talking about his "glory years" (though of course he did not formulate it quite like this) and came across as an authentic and reflective guy, but I particularly liked the structure of his overall talk - his 3-Ps for entrepreneurship: People, Passion and Perseverance.
Working for a fairly large organisation, I was pleased that he tipped his hat to the entrepreneurial spirit that can be achieved in the best big companies and reducing it to passion and persevance with the right people is a nice simple formula.
Listen in if you get a chance.
The title of this entry is "The" 3-Ps (with the "The" in inverted commas) because a short search of the web reveals that there appear to be dozens of 3-Ps (of success, sales, business etc. - most often they seem to be People, Process, Product...)
Case's flavour seems more immediate and actionable than most, and it also mirrors my own thinking on hard work, coaching and enthusiasm in the workplace. Perhaps this makes me biased but I am going to stick with Case on this ;-).
He spent most of his time talking about his "glory years" (though of course he did not formulate it quite like this) and came across as an authentic and reflective guy, but I particularly liked the structure of his overall talk - his 3-Ps for entrepreneurship: People, Passion and Perseverance.
Working for a fairly large organisation, I was pleased that he tipped his hat to the entrepreneurial spirit that can be achieved in the best big companies and reducing it to passion and persevance with the right people is a nice simple formula.
Listen in if you get a chance.
The title of this entry is "The" 3-Ps (with the "The" in inverted commas) because a short search of the web reveals that there appear to be dozens of 3-Ps (of success, sales, business etc. - most often they seem to be People, Process, Product...)
Case's flavour seems more immediate and actionable than most, and it also mirrors my own thinking on hard work, coaching and enthusiasm in the workplace. Perhaps this makes me biased but I am going to stick with Case on this ;-).
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
BA Body of Knowledge 2.0 available online for free
OK, I admit it; I am a little miffed that the IIBA has released the latest version of the BABOK (see also previous entry) for free at Google Books, but it is definitely a good reference.
Beyond the convenience of the whole online book experience, I like the fact that book comes with a neat little web-cloud that gives you an immediate overview of the book. Once this is expanded to work across all the books and into a snazzy visual navigation widget I will be more than happy ;-).
Beyond the convenience of the whole online book experience, I like the fact that book comes with a neat little web-cloud that gives you an immediate overview of the book. Once this is expanded to work across all the books and into a snazzy visual navigation widget I will be more than happy ;-).
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Microsoft is not all bad
As much as I hate to admit it, the guys at Microsoft really do some pretty cool stuff. A couple that have caught my eye recently:
Xbox - project Natal
This is going to be transformational like the Wii
Pivot from Live Labs
This is the kind of data visualisation tool that I love - you can just feel what this is going to mean for managing and traversing large chunks of data and information (think Jonathon Harris' universe - see also previous entry). It build on the wonderful seadragon technology (not that I really understand what that is, but it allows you to zoom in and out of pictures really quickly and I like that - see also this link for great examples).
Bill and Ballmer are not all bad.
Xbox - project Natal
This is going to be transformational like the Wii
Pivot from Live Labs
This is the kind of data visualisation tool that I love - you can just feel what this is going to mean for managing and traversing large chunks of data and information (think Jonathon Harris' universe - see also previous entry). It build on the wonderful seadragon technology (not that I really understand what that is, but it allows you to zoom in and out of pictures really quickly and I like that - see also this link for great examples).
Bill and Ballmer are not all bad.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Tribes, passion & getting ideas off the ground
Following on from the previous post on "Tribes" and the power of passionate leadership, I stumbled across a great site, the99percent.com that focuses on getting ideas off the ground. One videocast that jumped out was by Ji Lee (Director of Google Creative Lab) - he talks about the transformative power of personal projects (and the fact that the professional and personal world inevitably intersect if we are passionate about what we do, even if we like the idea of keeping them separate).
Posted using ShareThis
Posted using ShareThis
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Anyone can draw apparently - effective visualisation
Not being the greatest at drawing, but having an acute awareness at how useful visualisation is for communicating ideas, I am always interested in learning useful techniques that can be applied easily (see also my review of "The Back of the Napkin"). Over the last year I have had the opportunity to work with some very bright and creative people to create conceptual imagery to and have been impressed on how effective it can be.
As such, I was pleased when I stumbled across this nice set of video guides to drawing on VizThink (a favourite website of mine). Ultimately this is the same material that comes up in every 101-type book and course that I have seen, but it is succinct and easy to remember (my favourite kind of method!).
Having said this, I was a little disappointed that the post did not go beyond how to visualise particular elements to how to really use them effectively in presentations, meetings and workshops and simply to guide one's own thinking. On this front, I have been much more taken by the simple approach:
Of course it is the third step that is the most challenging (and the one that I certainly struggle with the most), but the good news is that there are literally hundreds of interesting sources for ideas on this front.. but that is something for later post!
As such, I was pleased when I stumbled across this nice set of video guides to drawing on VizThink (a favourite website of mine). Ultimately this is the same material that comes up in every 101-type book and course that I have seen, but it is succinct and easy to remember (my favourite kind of method!).
Having said this, I was a little disappointed that the post did not go beyond how to visualise particular elements to how to really use them effectively in presentations, meetings and workshops and simply to guide one's own thinking. On this front, I have been much more taken by the simple approach:
- Start with identifying the elements that are relevant to the problem or issue to be visualised
- Then decide upon the relationships between the elements (which are important and what flavour are the relationships)
- Once you have the block diagram in place, start playing with "visual metaphors" that can transport the key message best.
Of course it is the third step that is the most challenging (and the one that I certainly struggle with the most), but the good news is that there are literally hundreds of interesting sources for ideas on this front.. but that is something for later post!
What about an effective meeting?
Like so many others, I made some resolutions at New Year and will probably only manage to keep to them until the middle of February, but one of them was - how predictable - to rejoin the gym. In fact it was not just to rejoin the gym, but to actually go to it several times a week too and therein lies the challenge!
To keep my motivation, I am combining the gym attendance with working down my backlog of podcasts (I have about 100 hours of "stuff" that I want to get through). This evening one cast really stuck in my head - "Timely meetings" from the manager-tools team.
Admittedly, I have written about manager-tools' "Effective Meeting Protocol" before (see here for links and a brief overview), but I think it is worth reiterating (at least for myself if not for others!). In this latest cast they focus on the timeliness element of effective meetings - starting on time, having the agenda out in advance (and with time allocations for each discussion item).
18 months ago, when I first wrote about this, I was humble enough to admit that I am not the best at this (humble not necessarily being a trait that I am really known for, I think it worth mentioning). Today, I find I have to admit that I have got worse. It is frustrating to recognise how easy it is to slip on very simple things when under time pressure and when it is seen as nothing unusual.
So it is time to "get back to basics" and that is, in fact, my small business related resolution for the year; be on time to meetings, no meeting without an agenda, define goals upfront, seek to have actionable results leaving the meeting.
I remember well one of my first managers when I started in the consulting industry; a charming man, but ruthless in the workplace and the lesson I learned from him (though I admit, I find myself getting sloppier over time) was that simply keeping meetings running on time has an enormous effect on increasing focus and raising the sense of urgency within a project.
For that I thank him, (though we never did see eye-to-eye on my belief that it is possible to achieve the same effectiveness in meetings with a "light touch" (i.e. without forcing the formality of a meeting structure artificially and cutting off fruitful discussion - do "timeout" and "take that offline" sound familiar?).
Good luck to us all on improving our effectiveness with simple small steps this year!
To keep my motivation, I am combining the gym attendance with working down my backlog of podcasts (I have about 100 hours of "stuff" that I want to get through). This evening one cast really stuck in my head - "Timely meetings" from the manager-tools team.
Admittedly, I have written about manager-tools' "Effective Meeting Protocol" before (see here for links and a brief overview), but I think it is worth reiterating (at least for myself if not for others!). In this latest cast they focus on the timeliness element of effective meetings - starting on time, having the agenda out in advance (and with time allocations for each discussion item).
18 months ago, when I first wrote about this, I was humble enough to admit that I am not the best at this (humble not necessarily being a trait that I am really known for, I think it worth mentioning). Today, I find I have to admit that I have got worse. It is frustrating to recognise how easy it is to slip on very simple things when under time pressure and when it is seen as nothing unusual.
So it is time to "get back to basics" and that is, in fact, my small business related resolution for the year; be on time to meetings, no meeting without an agenda, define goals upfront, seek to have actionable results leaving the meeting.
I remember well one of my first managers when I started in the consulting industry; a charming man, but ruthless in the workplace and the lesson I learned from him (though I admit, I find myself getting sloppier over time) was that simply keeping meetings running on time has an enormous effect on increasing focus and raising the sense of urgency within a project.
For that I thank him, (though we never did see eye-to-eye on my belief that it is possible to achieve the same effectiveness in meetings with a "light touch" (i.e. without forcing the formality of a meeting structure artificially and cutting off fruitful discussion - do "timeout" and "take that offline" sound familiar?).
Good luck to us all on improving our effectiveness with simple small steps this year!
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Use case / user story - who cares?
So much for resolutions. It has been almost a month since my last post and I feel suitably disappointed with myself. And today I only have a short post:
I am repeatedly surprised by the vehemence of different analyst communities on issues of approach (and predictably on the rightness of their approach over all others). One consistent topic that always seems to provoke strong reactions is the question of requirement documentation via use case versus user story.
Personally I suspect that either and/or both approaches can be usefully applied (but then I always was a tiresome moderate) and that ultimately it mostly depends upon the content - I have seen (and written) variants of both that failed to extract what the underlying goal and business need of the user is and the sexiest template in the world was never going to fix them.
That said, I do appreciate that both approaches have value and should be in the analyst's arsenal. So I was delighted to read a posting on John Babcock's blog providing a great overview of thinking on this topic - he has put together a bunch of links to articles and sites that compare and contrast the approaches (of course both Fowler and Cockburn are represented, but there are several other interesting sources).
On reflection, I like the simplicity of user stories and their closeness to real world language, but they do not replace a well constructed use case model (as often as not, it is the model rather than the details that is really valuable) to help make sure that the requirements are complete. So both have value - use what makes sense for a given situation (and that could easily mean both) - how heavyweight do you need to be to ensure that you are capturing all the complexity of your project?
So, no strong reaction on my side. How moderate and boring.
Tough.
I am repeatedly surprised by the vehemence of different analyst communities on issues of approach (and predictably on the rightness of their approach over all others). One consistent topic that always seems to provoke strong reactions is the question of requirement documentation via use case versus user story.
Personally I suspect that either and/or both approaches can be usefully applied (but then I always was a tiresome moderate) and that ultimately it mostly depends upon the content - I have seen (and written) variants of both that failed to extract what the underlying goal and business need of the user is and the sexiest template in the world was never going to fix them.
That said, I do appreciate that both approaches have value and should be in the analyst's arsenal. So I was delighted to read a posting on John Babcock's blog providing a great overview of thinking on this topic - he has put together a bunch of links to articles and sites that compare and contrast the approaches (of course both Fowler and Cockburn are represented, but there are several other interesting sources).
On reflection, I like the simplicity of user stories and their closeness to real world language, but they do not replace a well constructed use case model (as often as not, it is the model rather than the details that is really valuable) to help make sure that the requirements are complete. So both have value - use what makes sense for a given situation (and that could easily mean both) - how heavyweight do you need to be to ensure that you are capturing all the complexity of your project?
So, no strong reaction on my side. How moderate and boring.
Tough.
Monday, 12 January 2009
ModernAnalyst.com
I came across modernanalyst.com a while ago, but was unimpressed. Quite apart from the name (which sounds to me like it should be a BBC television series from the open university from around 1982, populated by men in checkered shirts with beards discussing the philosophical differences between this and that), it was entirely lacking in content.
Luckily for me, I noticed a link to an article on the site about trends in business analysis for 2009 and although this particular article was not so great - "analysts are at the centre of all successful IT projects" seemed to be the underlying tone - it forced me back onto the site, which has been greatly enhanced.
It is full of interesting articles, a load of useful templates for download and a pretty active forum. It is this forum that I think will be valuable - it is all too easy to forget that there are people out there with exactly the same issues and concerns that you have, and there really is no need to reinvent the wheel - it is enough of a challenge to get one's head around the business, so leave the process templating to the world at large and profit from it!
They also seem to have affiliated themselves with the IIBA (International association of business analysis) - another organisation that I had been unimpressed with until fairly recently. The latest version of the "BABOK" that they produced is much improved - although it is still a bit heavyweight and "stodgy" (for want of a better word) and it looks like they are getting positive feedback for their analyst accredidation scheme.
Luckily for me, I noticed a link to an article on the site about trends in business analysis for 2009 and although this particular article was not so great - "analysts are at the centre of all successful IT projects" seemed to be the underlying tone - it forced me back onto the site, which has been greatly enhanced.
It is full of interesting articles, a load of useful templates for download and a pretty active forum. It is this forum that I think will be valuable - it is all too easy to forget that there are people out there with exactly the same issues and concerns that you have, and there really is no need to reinvent the wheel - it is enough of a challenge to get one's head around the business, so leave the process templating to the world at large and profit from it!
They also seem to have affiliated themselves with the IIBA (International association of business analysis) - another organisation that I had been unimpressed with until fairly recently. The latest version of the "BABOK" that they produced is much improved - although it is still a bit heavyweight and "stodgy" (for want of a better word) and it looks like they are getting positive feedback for their analyst accredidation scheme.
Monday, 8 December 2008
Agile & user centric design
I haven't written for a little while; life coming up to Christmas is "hectic" (and a bunch of other things not suitable for print on this blog). This weekend, I had been fully expecting to write a short introduction, describing how my string of bad luck over flights was over - I had a fantastic flight on Friday night, landing 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, I am now sitting at Heathrow Terminal 5 watching the delay on my flight back to Duesseldorf go from 10 minutes, to 20, to 60, to 90 minutes as they replace the tyre before we take off. Ah well.
As always it has given me a chance to a) spend more money than I wanted to on cheap DVDs and b) do a little reading on combining agile project management and user centric design. This is a topic close to my heart and something that is akin to squaring the circle. The basic difficulty is clear, user centric design approaches tend to try to map out a complete detailed vision of the user experience for an application or website in order to ensure a consistent and deliberate flow through the entire site, whereas agile approaches focus on evolutionary development of systems, building up the complexity of the solution over time.
There is no reason that these two approaches should not co-exist however. As always it is simply a question of measure; agile doesn't say no upfront design, just enough; user centric design doesn't say don't experiment over time, just understand the overarching customer needs you are trying to fulfill.
I am very pleased to see that there is a nascent discussion finally emerging out there on this topic. The following links provide some food for thought, with plenty of practical steps to making the two approaches work together (as well as giving so more detail on where the difficulties between the approaches arise in the first place):
- http://agileproductdesign.com/index.html - a really good blog, by a guy specialising in the combination of agile and usablity. Definitely someone I am going to be following in the coming months. I particularly like his analysis of where the difficulties arise.
- http://www.slideshare.net/mgiudice/humancentered-design-meets-agile-development-presentation-625465/ - a nice overview on combining approaches.
- http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2007may/agile-ucd.pdf - an article in the Journal of Usability Studies - good to see some designers enthusing about agile.
- http://www.alistapart.com/articles/gettingrealaboutagiledesign - another good blog, with some concrete practical advice on what to do when combining scrum and user-centric design.
- http://www.useit.com/alertbox/agile-methods.html - a recent article by Jacob Nielsen (usability guru) on difficulties with agile that has kicked off some controversial discussions online. Strange; the original article seems entirely common-sensical and compatible with agile as I understand it.
- http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-usability/ - a newsgroup with a pretty active discussion around usablility in agile projects.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Business model design & another disrupted flight
Predictably enough, I had another problem with flights today (see previous posts for the saga of my experiences on a weekly basis on flights between Germany and the UK). Today's installment was the diversion of my flight from Duesseldorf to London Heathrow to Amsterdam. In fairness this was due to a medical emergency and I was really impressed with the way the staff on board handled it, but nevertheless I do begin to feel ever so slightly unlucky with my air travel!
I am now at Heathrow slowly getting into holiday mode and was just checking through the latest feeds on netvibes when Osterwalder's busines-model-design blog jumped out at me again. I already wrote a little bit about this blog a while back (see here) and I have been really impressed with the clarity of his approach of using a simple framework to inspire business model innovation. His latest blog entry is on google book search (which is in general a really cool and interesting thing!) - he does a really good job of simplifying down the motivation to this new product and what it could mean in a highly competitive industry. Take a look here.
My flight out has just been called, so wish me luck.
I am now at Heathrow slowly getting into holiday mode and was just checking through the latest feeds on netvibes when Osterwalder's busines-model-design blog jumped out at me again. I already wrote a little bit about this blog a while back (see here) and I have been really impressed with the clarity of his approach of using a simple framework to inspire business model innovation. His latest blog entry is on google book search (which is in general a really cool and interesting thing!) - he does a really good job of simplifying down the motivation to this new product and what it could mean in a highly competitive industry. Take a look here.
My flight out has just been called, so wish me luck.
Monday, 27 October 2008
Tom Peters & blogs
The other day, I finally got around to cleaning out my "filing cabinet" (others might refer to it as a cardboard box, but I prefer to think of it as a filing cabinet) and came across an essay assignment I wrote in my final undergraduate year at university.
The lecturer was fantastic and the material interesting - Organisational Change & Design with Ian Colville. In retrospect, it was in fact, one of just three courses that were of any lasting value from my final undergraduate year, but that is something for another post.
The essay task was to write an imaginary obituary for the Economist on Tom Peters (management guru and co-author of In Search Of Excellence - and a good deal more since). The trick was that we had to be innovative. My innovation was to write the obituary as a first draft by the writer that had subsequently been edited (lots of redpen) by a feature editor with a quite different opinion of Peters.
This rediscovery resulted in two things; firstly I was reminded why I didn't go into journalism (so apologies for this blog once again!) and secondly I got interested in Tom Peters again.
If I am quite honest, I don't think he ever really matched In Search of Excellence with any of his consequent books (and if you are really interested in some of the underlying thinking, you are in fact better of going for the more substantial writings of Weick - see also my books list at Amazon), but he remains a fantastic speaker and has - unsurprisingly - become a prolific blogger.
His own blog, http://www.tompeters.com/, is average, but he has a whole range of interesting links to further resources and other bloggers, and it is this resource that I would recommend; he knows everyone it seems and I spent ages browsing blogs that he links to.
His presentations are almost certainly the nastiest, most unclear powerpoints I have ever seen, but if you can get beyond the colours and to a certain extent the hubris, there are some interesting points on the need to constantly challenge oneself and the organisation.
One of his most recent posting caught my eye - Peters participated in a podium discussion with Seth Godin (I have a posting on him planned already) sponsored by American Express. It can still be viewed online here. He has some good things to say about the world at large (politics, entrepreneurship, the internet), but I was particularly taken by the pair's discussion of blogs, according to Peters the single most important and transformational tool he has used in his own professional life in the last 15 years. That said, I must confess that I am not 100% convinced just yet. Indeed, Seth Godin's view of the blog seemed more plausible to me - it doesn't matter if people are not reading the blog, it is the act of putting your thoughts down in writing that provides the value.
I hope he is right, looking at my reader statistics ;-).
The lecturer was fantastic and the material interesting - Organisational Change & Design with Ian Colville. In retrospect, it was in fact, one of just three courses that were of any lasting value from my final undergraduate year, but that is something for another post.
The essay task was to write an imaginary obituary for the Economist on Tom Peters (management guru and co-author of In Search Of Excellence - and a good deal more since). The trick was that we had to be innovative. My innovation was to write the obituary as a first draft by the writer that had subsequently been edited (lots of redpen) by a feature editor with a quite different opinion of Peters.
This rediscovery resulted in two things; firstly I was reminded why I didn't go into journalism (so apologies for this blog once again!) and secondly I got interested in Tom Peters again.
If I am quite honest, I don't think he ever really matched In Search of Excellence with any of his consequent books (and if you are really interested in some of the underlying thinking, you are in fact better of going for the more substantial writings of Weick - see also my books list at Amazon), but he remains a fantastic speaker and has - unsurprisingly - become a prolific blogger.
His own blog, http://www.tompeters.com/, is average, but he has a whole range of interesting links to further resources and other bloggers, and it is this resource that I would recommend; he knows everyone it seems and I spent ages browsing blogs that he links to.
His presentations are almost certainly the nastiest, most unclear powerpoints I have ever seen, but if you can get beyond the colours and to a certain extent the hubris, there are some interesting points on the need to constantly challenge oneself and the organisation.
One of his most recent posting caught my eye - Peters participated in a podium discussion with Seth Godin (I have a posting on him planned already) sponsored by American Express. It can still be viewed online here. He has some good things to say about the world at large (politics, entrepreneurship, the internet), but I was particularly taken by the pair's discussion of blogs, according to Peters the single most important and transformational tool he has used in his own professional life in the last 15 years. That said, I must confess that I am not 100% convinced just yet. Indeed, Seth Godin's view of the blog seemed more plausible to me - it doesn't matter if people are not reading the blog, it is the act of putting your thoughts down in writing that provides the value.
I hope he is right, looking at my reader statistics ;-).
Monday, 20 October 2008
Manager-Tools podcast - part 2
What perfect timing! Having posted an entry about manager-tools yesterday, I downloaded the latest episode this morning and found that the entire podcast was based around the "Effective Executive" (which I covered a few weeks ago - see here) and in particular, the fundamentals of effective decision making. Basically, they central premise of the podcast is a statement made by Drucker:
"No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility. Until then there are only good intentions."
They then map this statement to the effective meeting protocol and especially to the need to action decisions directly in meetings if you really want them to happen; utterly trivial, known by everybody and ignored 95% of the time.
Brilliant.
"No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility. Until then there are only good intentions."
They then map this statement to the effective meeting protocol and especially to the need to action decisions directly in meetings if you really want them to happen; utterly trivial, known by everybody and ignored 95% of the time.
Brilliant.
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Manager-Tools podcast
Following on from last week's post on @Google videocasts at YouTube as a source of training materials (with a bit of inspiration thrown in for free), here is another installment on free online progessional learning resources; www.manager-tools.com.
Manager tools is a weekly podcast, accompanied with handouts and additional resources to practice.
Now, in the same way that I don't like the title "The effective executive" (see post), I don't like the name "manager-tools". Many of the podcasts provided at this site (and there are several hundred!) are of value to anybody working in a professional environment and the name detracts from this and puts many people off.
What I like about manager-tools is that it is conversational in tone (the two co-presenters are always very well prepared, but do the podcasts in a 1-2-1 informal kind of manner) and this makes it easy to take in.
And what I really like about manager-tools is that they focus on providing actionable behaviour-driven advice. They try to answer the how as well as the what (and to a lesser extent the why) of being effective.
Over the last year or so the number of really interesting podcasts from manager-tools has significantly decreased, but this does not detract from the core casts that they produced. In particular I would recommend the following sets (easily found at www.manager-tools.com):
Manager tools is a weekly podcast, accompanied with handouts and additional resources to practice.
Now, in the same way that I don't like the title "The effective executive" (see post), I don't like the name "manager-tools". Many of the podcasts provided at this site (and there are several hundred!) are of value to anybody working in a professional environment and the name detracts from this and puts many people off.
What I like about manager-tools is that it is conversational in tone (the two co-presenters are always very well prepared, but do the podcasts in a 1-2-1 informal kind of manner) and this makes it easy to take in.
And what I really like about manager-tools is that they focus on providing actionable behaviour-driven advice. They try to answer the how as well as the what (and to a lesser extent the why) of being effective.
Over the last year or so the number of really interesting podcasts from manager-tools has significantly decreased, but this does not detract from the core casts that they produced. In particular I would recommend the following sets (easily found at www.manager-tools.com):
- The original series on "The effective meeting protocol (EMP)" - nothing you haven't heard before, but nicely packaged and let's face it, practically every meeting we attend is ineffective in some way (and I say that in the knowledge that I am as poor as the next person on this front).
- The introductory set on "The management trinity" - their basic framework (1-2-1s, feedback, coaching and delegation), this resonates with me and fits in very well with my own organisation's approach to performance management.
- The DISC series - five podcasts focusing on the use of behavioural stereotyping to improve personal communications.
Monday, 13 October 2008
Google learning on YouTube
I promised a couple of weeks ago that I would write a little bit about alternative sources of interesting online professional training (as opposed to academic training - see previous post here). This entry is a first step in that direction; Google on YouTube is an incredible source of interesting material from the (almost) undisputed masters.
Despite some misgivings about Google as an organisation and their constant march to world domination, there is no avoiding the fact that they are obviously doing quite a lot of things right. The host of presentational material.. or should I say propaganda.. that they provide at YouTube gives a real insight into some of these things:
Despite some misgivings about Google as an organisation and their constant march to world domination, there is no avoiding the fact that they are obviously doing quite a lot of things right. The host of presentational material.. or should I say propaganda.. that they provide at YouTube gives a real insight into some of these things:
- Google Code Talks: OK, I can't really judge the details of many of these talks, technophobe that I am, but they have some good stuff on OpenSocial, the mobile platform Android and integrating google applications into your own sites.
- Google techtalks: This is another developer-centric forum, but also has a bunch of presentations and workshops from within google's development organisation; how do they use agile processes? how do they get the user involved in development? what is their take on the python object model? These are sessions by google employees for google employees and are on the whole thoroughly informative.
- Life@Google: For those interested in google as an organisation (and I personally am!), this channel provides a range of perspectives on how the company ticks - much of it is banal, much of it is vlog-madness, but sift through it and you see an organisation that has much to be proud of!
- Talks@Google: It doesn't matter who they are, they all want to talk at Google; Barack Obama (Candidates@Google), Salmen Rushdie, Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs (Authors@Google) or Wynton Marsalis (Musicians@Google)
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Latest postings from Telco 2.0
"2.0". Just reading the phrase already puts me on edge. There is so much 2.0 rubbish out there. That said, the guys from Telco 2.0 really do seem to have a good grip on what could happen in the telecommunications industry. They just posted another article on their "two-sided" business model thinking - basically the telco-provider as intermediary offering network services.
Although much of it feels a little like wishful thinking, the story they tell is definitely well structured and understandable. Here is the summary version:
Although much of it feels a little like wishful thinking, the story they tell is definitely well structured and understandable. Here is the summary version:
Thursday, 25 September 2008
At the risk of getting boring already.. TED is fantastic
Before leaving work earlier, a colleague stopped by my office ("my" and "office" are both exagerations given that I currently work at a pulpit on wheels in whatever office space I can find) and we got chatting about the world and, as I have often done over the last 12 months, I got on to the topic of TED.
It doesn't matter who I show the site to, it is always a delight to see their faces light up when I pick out just one or two presentations - this evening it was the classic presentation on the wii by Johnny Lee and Jonathan Harris' presentation of the website "we feel fine".
This second presentation is my personal favourite, Jonathan Harris' ability to create elegant user interfaces to simplify complex and aggregated data gives us a glimpse of what the internet is going to become and the ways we are able to interact with more complex information networks visually.
If you have not visited wefeelfine.org yet, then do so immediately..
And if you haven't visited TED, go there even quicker.
It doesn't matter who I show the site to, it is always a delight to see their faces light up when I pick out just one or two presentations - this evening it was the classic presentation on the wii by Johnny Lee and Jonathan Harris' presentation of the website "we feel fine".
This second presentation is my personal favourite, Jonathan Harris' ability to create elegant user interfaces to simplify complex and aggregated data gives us a glimpse of what the internet is going to become and the ways we are able to interact with more complex information networks visually.
If you have not visited wefeelfine.org yet, then do so immediately..
And if you haven't visited TED, go there even quicker.
Monday, 22 September 2008
Back "on topic" with analysis and design!
After yesterday's "off-topic" posting on the inspirational impact of "Where the hell is Matt?", I want to return today to something more related to the central topic of this blog - business analysis and software engineering; I listened to a podcast on the way home this evening. It was a cast from the pm411.org project management forum (http://pm411.org/2008/09/21/podcast-episode-036-mindmapping/) and the topic covered was mindmapping.
I will be honest - usually I don't like the pm411.org cast series; I find them slow moving and limited in content. This week's cast was no exception, but it was interesting in that it got me thinking about how I used to use mindmaps to structure different levels of interrelated information:
Used right, the multi-dimensional representation of information in a mindmap allows you to build an entire requirements document. You start with an informal capturing exercise, relating the information as it comes from the stakeholders. With the right tools you can label and map in the stakeholders too (it is just a question of labeling the lines or nodes with the appropriate tags).
I used to use visio, but that got a little too much like hard work so I moved to mindmanager (which is actually discussed in the podcast). The more you add to it the richer the network becomes. With more advanced tools I am guessing that the structure of the data can then be extracted and used in (for example) specification documentation.
A colleague introduced me to www.mindmeister.com recently. It is free to use and has some nice import/export functions as well as integration with various browsers and other applications (though I haven't played around with them yet). I have been using it for holiday planning, but it is more than sufficient to handle more complex maps!
It occurs to me now that I have probably missed an opportunity to use this simple technique - believe me, I know this sounds trivial, but I guess I am getting rusty and have forgotten some of the basics! - to identify dimensions and structures in interrelated information sets and then to build off of them throughout a project - it is easy to want to jump into more structured requirements hierarchies, flowcharts, sequence diagrams and domain modeling activities.
I am going to try it out again in the next project initiation phase I am involved in to see how much it really adds to the more formal deliverables.
I will be honest - usually I don't like the pm411.org cast series; I find them slow moving and limited in content. This week's cast was no exception, but it was interesting in that it got me thinking about how I used to use mindmaps to structure different levels of interrelated information:
Used right, the multi-dimensional representation of information in a mindmap allows you to build an entire requirements document. You start with an informal capturing exercise, relating the information as it comes from the stakeholders. With the right tools you can label and map in the stakeholders too (it is just a question of labeling the lines or nodes with the appropriate tags).
I used to use visio, but that got a little too much like hard work so I moved to mindmanager (which is actually discussed in the podcast). The more you add to it the richer the network becomes. With more advanced tools I am guessing that the structure of the data can then be extracted and used in (for example) specification documentation.
A colleague introduced me to www.mindmeister.com recently. It is free to use and has some nice import/export functions as well as integration with various browsers and other applications (though I haven't played around with them yet). I have been using it for holiday planning, but it is more than sufficient to handle more complex maps!
It occurs to me now that I have probably missed an opportunity to use this simple technique - believe me, I know this sounds trivial, but I guess I am getting rusty and have forgotten some of the basics! - to identify dimensions and structures in interrelated information sets and then to build off of them throughout a project - it is easy to want to jump into more structured requirements hierarchies, flowcharts, sequence diagrams and domain modeling activities.
I am going to try it out again in the next project initiation phase I am involved in to see how much it really adds to the more formal deliverables.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Some academic resources are really practical
Having graduated almost a decade ago (though, believe me, it doesn't feel that long!), I have developed a healthy scepticism for the applicability of what one learns at university. That said, I am amazed at how seldom academic resources are used in professional training and career development programmes - it seems to me to be a wasted opportunity.
Ever since MIT opened up its course-materials to the general public a few years back, the number of schools offering high quality learning resources for free online has exploded. Predictably enough, this started with the business schools, but it now covers pretty much all disciplines.
And it really isn't just about collections of course notes poorly transcribed into powerpoint (although there is plenty of that too!). There are podcasts, video lectures, reading lists and even some interactive elements.
Now of course this doesn't necessarily compete with the best of the subscription based learning sites (either distance learning universities, or private organisations like SkillSoft), but then again, it is free!
Below I have put together a selection of some of my favourite academic sites:
Ever since MIT opened up its course-materials to the general public a few years back, the number of schools offering high quality learning resources for free online has exploded. Predictably enough, this started with the business schools, but it now covers pretty much all disciplines.
And it really isn't just about collections of course notes poorly transcribed into powerpoint (although there is plenty of that too!). There are podcasts, video lectures, reading lists and even some interactive elements.
Now of course this doesn't necessarily compete with the best of the subscription based learning sites (either distance learning universities, or private organisations like SkillSoft), but then again, it is free!
Below I have put together a selection of some of my favourite academic sites:
- MIT - one of the frontrunners, MIT offer mostly written material, but also some multimedia courses across all disciplines.
- LSE - this a specialist podcast feed from the Information Systems and Innovation Group in the Department of Management. As you would expect the LSE faculty always have some interesting things to say.
- Open University's openlearn - pretty much every discipline, mostly written course notes, but really well presented.
- Berkeley - all kinds of disciplines and lots of videocasts and podcasts - I am particularly enjoying the first year undergraduate podcasts on "European civilisation from the Renaissance to the present"; you can just imagine the classroom from any number of movie representations of US top colleges!
- INSEAD - the knowledgecasts are informal interviews with the professors and industry leaders and at 10-15 minutes a piece are easy to digest!
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