This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
At one point, euphemistically referring to troops as "resources," McChrystal writes, "Resources will not win the war, but under-resourcing could lose it." Another way to reads this sentence is: Under-resourcing could lose the war, but more resources won't necessarily win it, either.
Nothing to see here. Keep moving.
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Saturday, September 19, 2009
Calling Bullshit on Project Management 2.0 -- OK. I've got your attention with my over the top title. Sorry about that.
Actually, over at Glen Alleman's Herding Cats: Top Down / Bottom Up = Project Management 2.0? Not with this approach, he doesn't so much call bullshit on PM 2.0 but rather on an unconvincing setup and payoff of someone else's promotion of the idea that purports to blend the best parts of "traditional" (for want of a better word) and "agile" PM.
I can't stand it when the presentation of good ideas are ruined by poorly developed logic and arguments promoting them.
Magic Numbers - Project Management -- From Scott Berkun, The magic numbers of project management, an exploration of some of the games played with estimates.
One of the things he doesn't mention in the "what to do instead" section is to make the estimation process a conversation and the open use of range estimates (buffers) for the project as a whole. This takes the pressure off of everybody to come up with [the impossible] accurate estimate.
MS Project 2010 Unveiled -- ComputerWorld reports that MicroSoft has opened up on the next version of MS Project, the application we all love to hate. It's apparently picking up the "ribbon" interface that has me still re-learning how to do things in Office 2007.
Brian Kennemer at Projectified is highlighting some of the features, including a Team Planner and a Timeline view. I'm sure he'll be coming out with more.
My big questions are whether they're fixing the print function so it's more intuitive about what'll show up on a page without going through multiple iterations of Print Preview, and, more important, if the scheduling engine will let you level resources BEFORE identifying a critical path.
Beijing Flea Market Slide Show -- kkfung at Lenscape.org mashes together videos and photos from a range of sources, including Flickr accounts. He asked my permission to use about a half dozen or so of my pictures from the Panjiayuan "dirt market" in Beijing. Here's the result...
Multitask -- It's been a while since I've posted here on my blog...been distracted by Twitter and Facebook. Too easy to drop snippets and links in those sites. But given my history of ranting about multitasking in a work context here, I just had to point you to this game simulation. How many activities can you split your time attention among?
Unfocused? - Not Really - My Infinite Summer -- About of a third of the way through the 1,000 page Infinite Jest, I've committed to it. Brittney Gilbert, at the Infinite Summer blog, has a great post on the experience, that matches mine. From You Have Chosen To Be In Here...
Infinite Jest takes focus. I cannot listen to music while reading this novel, nor can I take it in with television on in the background. I can't skim parts and still get the gist. The text requires 100% participation on my part. It has become a meditation. I have to be present and mindful in order to fully ingest the words before me. I cannot click to open a new tab, to check to Twitter to see if anyone famous has died, or refresh D-Listed. (Which I am proud to say I have not done even once during the drafting of this post. Yet.) It's just me and the lavish landscape Wallace created.
"I am in here."
I have chosen to care about this book, to give it a place in my life. In doing so I am rewarded with messages in IJ about the importance of being present. Of just breathing. Themes abound in IJ about focus, about choosing what it is that you pay attention to, and how crucial it is to do that with the utmost care. If only because our whole lives depend on it.
...
The non-linear (to say the least) structure, the constant change in voice, forced flipping, always flipping, to the back of the book for endnotes are elements that don’t allow you to get lost in a story. "You are reading a book," you are often reminded. You are in here. You are not Cinderella at the ball or Hermione at Hogwarts, you are reading Infinite Jest. You may get caught up in the frenzy of Erdedy's panicked wait for pot, but not for long. Soon you are reading Infinite Jest again...
I'm glad it's the first real piece of fiction I've picked up in more than a few years.
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