You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2006.
I’m not going to post anything in the next couple of weeks as I’ll be on holidays! My goals for these holidays are: rest – rest – rest and stay with my family. No PC, no email, no work related readings. I thank all of you: thank you for reading my posts and giving feedback. PierG P.S. I’ll be on holidays with my wife and my 2 years old little boy so I’m not sure that I’ll be able to achieve the ‘rest – rest – rest’ part of my goals 
As every team providing services and as every agile team, we need metrics on what we do. There are a lot of good ideas and discussions about which are the good metrics and, above all, HOW to define metrics that are useful FOR YOU. We all love ‘objective’ metrics: something that you can measure in an objective (and automatic) way. So, when we start talking about customer satisfaction, we go into a difficult field: do we have to use indirect objective metrics? Can we use/trust surveys? Some weeks ago I went in touch with the concept of ‘the ultimate question’. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia : A net promoter score (NPS) is the result of a customer satisfaction survey in which customers are asked only one so-called “ultimate” question: How likely are you to recommend Company or Product X to a friend or colleague? Is this the way to a more objective measure of customer satisfaction? PierG
As I heard in a great podcast from the ITConversations network, we moved in the last 15 years from an internet as library, through an internet as a big shop, to a internet as a social place where to meet and share info. Now, almost every company has security problems: they mainly don’t like their core projects/ideas/data flow away to competitors. How can we handle this paradox? From one side the internet is freely and deeply moving to a place in which to share info – and companies like this a lot as it makes people smarter and more effective -, from the other side companies want to ‘close’ this flow. PierG
What you read in the title of this post, is what you read on a slide of ours (me, my boss, my colleagues …) if you are so unlucky We have our own experience, and our own theory on how to handle outsourcing in the IT space. Few days ago I listened to an interesting podcast from Gartner (Linda Cohen) in which this brilliant VP talks about 8 myths around outsourcing. Putting these two things together, I’d like to point out three of these myths: The myth of enemy: the outsourcer is not a ’standard’ supplier. You usually have to provide a service with these guys: we are often talking about strong relationship with the end users and with your side of the extended team. That’s why we prefer to have a real partnership with the outsourcer: we want to see ourselves as a unique team. To tell the truth we love to have this kind of approach in EVERY relationship with third parties. The myth of self management: signing the contract is NOT a finish, is a start! The hard way is starting in this moment in time. Things are not happening as a magic: you need to spend timeAND resources to getting things done. The myth of steady state: no matter the contract, things are going to change! Relax, that’s life! And you will never be able to predict the future and put everything in the contract. This point plus the previous two, lead to our vision: people are the key. You need to select the people that are working with you NOT just reading CVs but talking to them! PierG to listen to a typical presentation that we do.
I want to underline a comment to a previous post from Mark Horstman: he is a brilliant guy and I do agree on almost everything he writes. Continuous Partial Attention doesn’t work. Nor does anyone who says they are multi-tasking actually multi-task with any efficiency or effectiveness. And again he is right and my idea of Continuous Partial Attention is a bit different: In my opinion, the CONTINUOUS part of CPA is where we need to work ok to keep focus. I’d really love to have feedback from Linda on this topic. PierG
At least, from a standpoint of what works BEST. CPA is the tech equivalent of what HBR recently called Executive Attention Deficit.
If you’re allowing yourself to be pulled in 10 different directions, you’re not focusing. The whole POINT of focusing is to eliminate all other inputs. If you’re “focusing on A while scanning B and C”, then you’re NOT focusing on A.
You don’t need to scan all that stuff. When you go on vacation, the world doesn’t collapse. If you check your mail on vacation, your family notices.
Being connected CAN be a good thing, but it is not an excuse for lack of focus.
Being part of the great Manager Tools community, I came in touch with this nice podcast: Controlling chaos - project management in the real world. If you like podcasts, check it out: I’ve just started listing to the SCRUM episodes and I found them interesting. PierG
I’m pleased to write that XPLabs has a new site with a lot of brand new contents: rss feed, resources, training. Francesco Cirillo is brilliant guy: check it out (in italian). PierG
Listening to some podcasts, I came in touch with the concept of continuous partial attention by Linda Stone. As far as I understand is a kind of ‘evolution’ of the concept/myth of multitasking following the new era of always connected / super – communication / multimedia / social network … The idea is that we are moving from ‘do many things in the same time’ to ’scan the continuous alerts we are receiving to select the best to get/act upon’. Have a look at this post on O’Reilly radar in which you can read notes from a speech by Linda Stone about this topic. PierG
When answering emails, you should also pay attention to the tone of the email itself. Let’s see some category examples: . plain or funny. Joking by email, in my experience, is ALWAYS a NO NO. In any case I wouldn’t suggest answering with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to an email in which the sender is trying to be funny or relaxed or something. He can be rude. . angry or calm. Emails shouldn’t be interpreted. In general the tone in an email is by far different from what you can feel on a face-to-face communication. Usually the tone is HIGHER in an email: no matter if it’s positive or negative. For this reason I suggest to be always some degrees more ‘plain’ than the original mail you are answering. PierG
We have some behavioral pattern in the way in which we perceive things, communicate and learn. Among others, there is the VAK model – see previous posts or Google for more info. VAK stands for: Visual, Auditive, Kinesthetic. This model says that we tend to perceive using - mainly: . visual patterns: we tend to imagine and describe using visual clues. So if someone writes ‘I wait for you showing in a clearer way what you are writing’, don’t answer ‘OK, I’l l tell you the whole stuff so you’ll be able to listen to my reasons’. It will be harder for him if you use the ‘auditive’ channel: he will probably be a bit upset. . auditive patterns: we tend to use more auditive clues. See my previous example. . kinesthetic patterns: we tend to experience more ‘physical’ feelings. A kinesthetic would probably write something like: ‘Please, came in my office: I want to touch with hands your solution: My stomach says that there might be something wrong.’ .. to be continued … PierG
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