The concept of Darkworkers and Lightworkers is buzzing on a couple of blogs I favor at the moment. In essence, Darkworkers align themselves to the needs of themselves, i.e. they are selfish individuals who live only for personal gain. On the flipside, Lightworkers align themselves to the needs of humanity. It’s important at this time […]
Are there Darkworkers in your department? Read More »
Information is the basis of the modern world. It’s the Information Age (wasn’t that Oracle who had that in their strapline in the 90s?) Information is power, so they say. But how do you get your information? This article covers how we get information from external sources, i.e. it isn’t about the coffee-machine chat. I’m
Build an Information Catalog Read More »
Frequently, I’ve felt my boss (in a number of organizations) is on another planet. Have you?
The ‘mystery’ boss: why your bosses behavior may occasionally look strange Read More »
Career development isn’t just about doing a great job (although mastering your craft is a solid way to build a career to the greatest of heights), it’s also about building, maintaining and developing your profile inside and external to an organization. You can build your profile as I’ve just mentioned, by doing a great job
Finding niche causes to raise your profile Read More »
Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are often the ‘unsaid’ requirements of a new product or system. NFRs should describe an important business context. Organizations who express new requirements of an IT system or a product tend to be much better at describing how something should work rather than the conditions in which it should work. For IT departments,
NFRs: The mysterious requirements of a business Read More »
In today’s climate of risk management, compliance, ITIL, Prince II and sophisticated management (the ‘regime’) innovation often loses out, as strict control of projects and operations demand repeatable, mature processes. A lot of investment goes into that situation, and changing them is costly and disruptive. So how inside a regime can innovation be stimulated without being
Creating technical innovation in a regimented world Read More »
Developing and improving your public speaking skills is a sure fire way of improving your personal confidence. On a similar vein, research and experience tells me that people who can demonstrate a grasp of language succeed better in the workplace. It’s similar to the psychological phenomenon that overweight people are perceived as less intelligent (with
How to Articulate Better Read More »
I doubt many of us can answer this question Yes or No outright, but the answer maybe lurking there if you consider how frustrated you might be about not achieving your (realistic) desires. Career success, for example, is dependent on other folks supporting you and recognising your achievements. But I’d say in most cases, it’s
Are you restricting your own Success? Read More »
Technical professions require precision in language. We can’t express computer program code in slang, as much as we can’t express an insurance illustration without being exact. So in our profession, you’d expect all articulation and use of language to be unambiguous and precise, wouldn’t you? Well research has shown that technical professionals can still lack
How to Tune Into Language as a Technical Leader Read More »
I frequently see and hear about how organizations struggle with the planning of programmes or large scale projects, as is often the case nowadays, they involve the integration of many partners, business units, mavericks, doubters and in summary complexity. The complexity, at first, creates chaos which manifests itself as overwhelming dependencies and uncertain delivery dates.
Using Chaos to Organize large scale programs and projects Read More »
‘Governance’ is a term that is becoming more and more popular in today’s business. Governance, in essence, is the process of policing an organization internally, making sure standards and policies are adhered to, budgets are kept and that decisions are rational and appropriately transparent. Governance is there to ensure your organization complies with Sarbanes-Oxley, should
Is Governance a pain in the ass? Read More »
I frequently receive suggestions on subjects; these are always helpful – it helps me focus my writing on to topics that have value to you… and that’s why I do this: to add value to the community of technical professionals. So I’d like to hear from anyone who has a suggestion for an article on
If as you’ve felt that your meetings haven’t had the right spark of energy, or actually resulted in anything but a room full of hot air, then read on.
The ‘art’ of Opening and Closing meetings Read More »
A number of emails led me to write this article on communicating ‘Bad News’. This is a common issue in business, particularly in the western world where short-term results are king. Passing on information that is considered to be unwelcome fills a lot of people with angst and dread, so I want to address this
Communicating ‘Bad News’ Read More »
