Welcome to My Blog
Goals v. Systems
http://jamesclear.com/goals-systems This article struck a chord in me, if a slightly negative one. I’m an insane planner, To Do list maker, and end-of-year Goal Setting Workshop kind of a guy. The idea of giving up all of that for just a daily process sounded a little too unfocused and against everything I believed. Then again, […]
On Call Nurse
This week, from last Monday morning until next Monday morning, I’m “On Call.” That means I’m signed up to received robo-calls at all times of the day or night if any of 100 triggers go off on one of our sites, including one java server out of 100 going silent for a second, or the […]
Don’t Forget Release Planning!
One of the odd behaviors with the current rage for Agile and Lean Startup is an aversion to plan further than 2 or 3 weeks out. The current thinking is to get something out there as fast as possible and “lean in” to a quick user or A/B test. [Editor’s note: I recognize it’s a […]
Programmatic Ad Placement
<http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2293623/Why-Real-Time-Bidding-is-Set-to-Become-Huge I find programmatic ad placement fascinating. If it works as planned, what will happen to the ad buying department at ad agencies? Seems like they might become superfluous. What would really interest me is when your whole page (either web or mobile) is 'on the auction block', where you could make bids on the content, placement, navigation, etc, then sit back and watch the fireworks. Analytics and multi-variant tests provide this 'auction' after the fact, of course. But designers, IAs, and content strategists seem so much slower on the recognizing success than marketers. I dream of some day having an easy-to-use dashboard that allows teams to set up many different page, content, and navigation configurations with a filter for audience targeting. The templates would respond to what's working and clearly chart what's not. It might be out there already, I just haven't seen development teams responding to it like marketers are responding to programmatic ad placement.
Local Search
Still feels like local search is as dis-aggregated as web search was in the early 90s. The fact I can easily find out what online stores sells a specific hammer (and for how much) but can’t search for which bakeries on my street sell cinnamon buns is weird. Seems like a business ready for innovation. […]
Agile Estimation
http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-estimation-techniques The above article is a good overview of the Agile Estimation process. I would disagree on one important point, however. And it’s a point most agilists would disagree with me on: I believe the ‘planning poker’ approach to estimating works best in the early inception phases of a project, and again for release planning. […]
Easy 3-Page Scope Roadmap
Here’s one simple way of showing a scope or product roadmap to your partners and clients. I’ve found partners can absorb it quickly, get excited about it, and understand the hard work that’ll need to happen first before it can be fully realized. Thanks to Lu Lacourte and the team at Cibo to introducing me to this useful […]
Check, Checkpoint
I was on a short project recently that had to move quickly, so early on, we decided to whiteboard out our activities for the day at 9am, then checkpoint on our progress for ten minutes at noon, then again 5 pm. Guess what happened? When noon and 5 rolled around each day, one group or […]
The Mobile Army
Nietzsche (1844-1900) said ‘truth is a mobile army of metaphors’. He said a lot of other things, of course, not worth mentioning here. But it’s that one quote that came most often to mind during my visit to the Agile Alliance 2013 in Nashville recently. From session to session, lunch conversation to bar stool banter, the […]
The New Pseudo Science
The Viennese philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994) is remembered for calling Marx and Freud to the carpet for what he called ‘pseudo science’, criticizing their theories for avoiding ‘falsification’ or testing that would render them incorrect. Popper felt ‘real science’, on the other hand, was always open to falsification. For example, Einstein was open to being […]
Catch Someone
