Doug's Blog Archives – Page 26 of 58

23 Feb 2011

Ensuring Successful Outcomes

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:47:29-06:00February 23rd, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Software Development|

I was recently reminded of the importance of following a solid process for ensuring success using outcomes.

Manage by outcome, not by task.

You want to tell people what the desired outcome is and let them figure out how to achieve it. The alternative is micro-management which does not develop the abilities of people to solve future problem; and it stifles creativity and the desire for some autonomy over your work.

But using outcomes doesn't guarantee success.

Have you ever played that game where one person reads a long complex sentence. Then they pass it on to the next person, and the next, and […]

17 Feb 2011

Creativity Just Doesn’t Work Like That

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:47:33-06:00February 17th, 2011|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

I went to the hockey game this evening with my business partner (really good tickets courtesy of a very generous friend of ours). Al was telling her that I would probably write a blog post about the game and somehow blend in some business lessons from the game.

But my first reaction was, "Hey, I write about what I want when it comes to me. Creativity doesn't work like that." Telling me to write about something actually blocks the creative process; you can't force it.

I am sure he was thinking that here are two teams (Calgary Flames and the other guys) fighting for playoff spots, Doug […]

14 Feb 2011

Our Approach for Designing Applications

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:47:50-06:00February 14th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

We are currently building an application that will help businesses and the people in them: execute on their strategy, work on their businesses and focus on the most important work first.

Over time our process for designing the application and eventually getting to a working application has changed (and it will probably continue to do so as we move forward). My part of the process ends when it moves into source control, HTML and detailed look and feel. I am focused on capturing two main things in this project:

The underlying business rules,
The user interface design (or user experience).

Now to be clear; […]

3 Feb 2011

Fair is Fair (Red Gate and CRTC)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:47:55-06:00February 3rd, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation, Software Development|

I've been reading a book called "Your Brain At Work" by David Rock lately. It is really about how your brain works (or doesn't) during the day both at work and at home. The concept is that if you understand, you can use the knowledge to your benefit by controlling how you think and react to the world. This is one of the best books I have read for its impact on my own thinking.

In the book the author states that we are wired to know what is fair and what is not. In fact survival often depended […]

25 Jan 2011

Focus On The Good News Folks!

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T14:28:42-06:00January 25th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

It is a funny thing.

I wrote my last post thinking, “Hey this is good news, I can pretty much do anything I really want to if I am willing to just work at it.” and “As I practice I will get better and better.” These thoughts really pumped me up and I saw opportunity to keep growing as a person… maybe even become great at some things.

A lot of people when they read it went, “I guess I’ll have to settle for not being very good then.”

I’ve always assumed I can do most things if I put my mind to […]

24 Jan 2011

Practice Makes Perfect – Period

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:48:09-06:00January 24th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation, Software Development|

To become good, better or great at something we need to practice; right?

But obviously there are some people who have natural talent that slingshots them past everyone else. They can become great at something in a fraction of the time of regular people; it is called talent. These are the instant success stories you hear about all the time… they are born with "the gift".

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? More relevant here… which came first, the talent or the practice?

I was killing a bit of time in a bookstore recently and skimmed the book "Talent Is Overrated: […]

18 Jan 2011

Zap! Make an Improvement

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:48:16-06:00January 18th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership|

I just remembered something I read in "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh.

At Zappos they asked every employee to make an improvement to the business every day. The cumulative impact is huge.

If you have 10 employees and every employee makes an improvement to the business every day for a year (say 200 working days), that is 2000 improvements.

This illustrates the power of a group of empowered and motivated people all working towards a common objective; leverage.

What improvement are you making today? Tomorrow?

17 Jan 2011

Fortune Cookies Don’t Lie

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:48:23-06:00January 17th, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

I recently got a fortune cookie that said:

"The smallest deed is better than the biggest intention".

In a nutshell: dreams, ideas and intentions are worthless without action towards achieving them.

Far too many starting entrepreneurs are all about the next "greatest idea". They put in place non-disclosure agreements, confidentiality clauses, and non-compete agreements. They are focused so much on protecting the idea and preventing others from stealing it (and thereby building it) that they often don't get past the idea phase.

How can you get customers, investors, employees, etc. if you can't tell anyone your brilliant idea.

Yes, in order to build […]

12 Jan 2011

Sterile Environments Are Depressing

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:48:31-06:00January 12th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership|

Husbands can now rejoice, there is a scientific explanation for what men have subconsciously understood for years, too much housework sucks.

Apparently our obsession for clean and sterile environments is depressing us. An article I recently read in The Metro said that we are now making our world so clean and sterile that our bodies are being robbed of the multitudes of benign bacteria and germs to fight on a regular basis. This is causing us to become both weaker and in many cases our immune systems actually start attacking our own bodies leading to things like increases in […]

11 Jan 2011

Managing Projects by Outcome

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:48:35-06:00January 11th, 2011|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Software Development|

If you have used most popular project management software tools (Microsoft Project, etc.) you notice they encourage two things:

Schedule (time-line),
Tasks (and milestones) scheduled on a time-line.

One major issue with time-line based project planning is that the project plan is usually out of date by the end of the first week. Nothing ever goes according to plan so you either spend lot of time changing the plan, or just use the time line as a rough guide; not ideal.

Another common approach is to list all the things that need to get done (tasks or to do's) in a big list and […]

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