My wife recently decided to get some of her Zumba friends together and enter the Zumba "Do the Pause Contest". I ended up (long story) being part of the camera crew, director and video editor. There is enough involved in this process for a blog entry or two.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the resulting entry. (Note: Sadly, you need to log into Facebook to view the video.)
I recently read "Kanban – Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Company" by David Anderson.
The most important takeaway is the power of focus.
I don't think the author quite stated it that way. He basically presented numerous examples and statistical evidence to show that limiting work in progress lead to a more effective and predictable outcome for software teams; especially those working on maintenance or lots of little projects for different systems.
It seems the more work you have on your plate that you are trying to simultaneously juggle the less efficient people and teams are.
Kanban essentially proves what other […]
What does working on the business really mean?
As a business owner (or entrepreneur) you spend a lot of time working to build your business. You are:
And many business owners can generate a lot of revenue and even profit doing the above. They may even significantly grow their businesses.
So isn’t that […]
Timesheets don't lie.
Sure people filling out timesheets can be less than honest, but more often than not, they are more inaccurate than dishonest.
I've come to the very firm conclusion that if want to achieve your full potential, obtain your peak performance or build a great company you need to measure where you and everyone else spend their time.
When you are doing your strategic planning, looking to improve your business, thinking to grow sales or just working to satisfy your existing customers; it is likely that free time is in short supply.
This means you will tend to be […]
In my prior post I listed 15 business challenges and received another eight (8) and counting additional ideas from the crowd. When I wrote the list I purposely stated similar problems a few different ways to see if they would form “bunches” in the responses.
Based on preliminary feedback (I’ll post an updated list later in the summer), the following are the top 5 statements/challenges:
The forecast for today is fire. If we make it through that the rest of the week looks pretty good.
Are you accomplishing your most important work?
We are on our count-down to our product launch. We just need to make it through the next few weeks and focus on our most important work.
For us, the end is near… then things get going for real.
Wow, 11 years.
As they say, I wish I knew then what I know now.
We started out as a software development consulting firm. We moved into building and managing hosted applications for our customers and their clients. Over 150,000 employees have had access to tools we have built at companies with pretty impressive credentials.
Then we built and sold our first hosted application (PenForms) obtaining well over 40% of the available market. Near as we can tell, we have the largest market share out of our competitors, largely because we had a good product and good customer service. The biggest thing we got […]
The simple answer: Everyone.
Actually this goes for any business. Quality is not a department or a person, it is something a company needs to live and breath from top to bottom.
The development team creates the code. If the software contains bugs, the developers created them.
If you are using third party libraries, developer may have inherited some bugs, but again, it is up to the developers to deal with them.
Quality is as much an attitude as a practice.
If you don't own the code as a team and own quality as a team; you won't have the right attitude to […]
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the power of crowd sourcing.
I’ve compiled a list of business challenges that are all somewhat related but stated in different ways for people in different situations. We are looking at getting some feedback to support some of our marketing and product development efforts. Leave a comment or contact us directly, we’d love to hear from you.
Which of the following can you relate to personally the most? Which do you think are the most prevalent and compelling for businesses in general?
If you tell one or more people something, it is not a secret; or at least assume it isn't.
Our society discourages people from talking about money.
If employees know too much they will ask for more money if the company is doing well or panic and leave if the company is doing poorly.
If your customers knew that […]