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Urgent Versus Rude: Email overload |
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By exocubic on
7/16/2008 3:35 PM
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This blog was prompted by a conversation with a client who was trying to improve their communication process but was constantly bogged down in response mode. You are not the only one with 352 unread messages in your inbox; go ahead, breathe.
A famous dead guy once said, "if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." (mostly attributed to Pascal).
I concur; we tell our clients when we are working on business processes
that email is the big hammer - to which everything looks like a nail,
thus other forms of communication, like forums, FAQ, even Blogs, open
up the possibility of slicing the complex messages into smaller parts,
but by nature people revert to what is easy (the big hammer). Solving
the problem involves:
- identifying the forms of question that eat up your time (not al ...
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Dealing with the mess |
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By exocubic on
7/14/2008 10:38 AM
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I once had a boss, the VP of Engineering, who stated "Having employees is like mud on your boots." How nice. But his point was that as an Engineer, he could deal with problems from the technical sense, rather than problems from the human sense; he made a good point. There is a Proverb that states, loosely, "Where there is no ox, there is no poop, but you can gain a lot with an ox." This blog is about dealing with the mess...
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Time well spent - hired servants versus employees |
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By exocubic on
4/10/2008 12:47 PM
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We treat our employees like family, if we care about them. That's not saying much if the corporate leadership does not care well for their family, but that's another story. But we often treat our contractors like indentured servants - or at least hired servants - and thus evaluate their work by a different standard. This can cost more in the long run... we need to be careful to understand our own mindset!
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About Software Prototypes |
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By exocubic on
3/3/2007 12:15 PM
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Scared of prototypes? The customer may get the wrong idea, what if it morphs into the final code, etc. Software projects are filled with good and bad examples of prototype usage. Some prototypes become the real thing, and sometimes that is OK. Prototyping can vary from project to project for a variety of reasons, but should the outcome be left to happenstance or can we, instead, truly understand the kinds of prototyping and thus be intentional about their various outcomes? This blog discusses three stages of prototyping: Elementary, Expanded, and Evolutionary...
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