The other day I met a developer who went for a job interview and was asked to write a sorting algorithm. He was caught off-guard, didn’t do it very well, and failed the interview. But the company itself also failed, because it turns out they didn’t understand sorting algorithms either. Here’s the test question: You … Continue reading
Earlier this week I was involved in a discussion about staff compensation, and one of our number said, in response to someone who was struggling with the issue, “Does your team have targets? Get rid of ‘em.” I couldn’t have agreed more. One major problem with targets comes about when they are different from the … Continue reading
A few words about meaningful metrics. When implementing a change of working a while back in my development team my boss of the time said, “Well, okay, but I want you to show me that your changes are making a difference”. What’s the metric for better software? I knew all about the dangers of measuring … Continue reading
When CEOs and other leaders — such as Cabinet Secretaries — say “we need to take more risks”, they don’t really mean it. Or at least, they don’t mean it in the way most of us interpret it. I was thinking about this after reading Mark Foden’s excellent response to Sir Gus O’Donnell’s recent Telegraph … Continue reading
Thanks to the essential Agile Radar, I found my way today to Pete Abilla’s review of The Toyota Mindset by Yoshihito Wakamatsu. It’s fascinating to read a distilled version of Taiichi Ohno’s thinking, and the core concepts really stand out. Having often listened to John Seddon I’m wary of “lean”. He, too, learned from Ohno, … Continue reading
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting to the Y-Combinator London tech startup community on the subject of Creating Brilliant Teams. You can see the video of this and the other presentations over on the HN London Vimeo page, so here’s just a very brief summary of what I said: Space to learn. … Continue reading
Paul Clarke has an excellent post in which he talks about the importance of having a purpose when trying to measure things. That’s not quite the point of his post, but it does nevertheless provide a really telling concrete example of why it can be meaningless to try to measure something if there isn’t a … Continue reading
I was struck last week by the story of the Netflix customer revolt — it shows that even young companies have problems managing change. To review: Netflix want to shift their business to video streaming, and away from DVD delivery. As part of this they’re reducing the service to DVD customers so that you can … Continue reading
The other week I joined a number of peers at IndigoBlue‘s November Second Wednesday breakfast to discuss the subject of critical success factors in complex projects. As usual it was held under the Chatham House rule. What follows, then, are not minutes, but some of the important discussion points that stuck with me. Contents Definition … Continue reading
There’s a short piece on eBay over at the Wall Street Journal that’s hugely instructive about strategy and technology in a non-technology company. So many lessons in such a small space… Adequate technology hobbles the business; A strong technological backbone opens up new opportunities; Technological short-termism is really costly; The business strategy needs to include … Continue reading
