Living by Design

I've been a Getting Things Done © disciple for a few years. Over that time I learned a couple of secrets to leverage David Allen's principles in my day to day work environment: Work context is everything - physical context is becoming less important Keep it simple - use the parts that make sense for you Work Context I spend 80% of my day online.  Either on my computer, or my Android phone.  A large portion of that time is spent communicating with people ... and Gmail does most of the heavy lifting.  Since this is where I work from, this is where my GTD experiments were honed.  If you have a similar work profile, perhaps you'll find something useful in my experience. Getting Organized 1. Collection The Gmail Inbox is a natural collector.  Don't fight it ... feed it! Stuff all ideas, tasks and loose ends into your inbox.  How?  Simply email yourself. I've added a little twist to boost this process.  First, I added a contact with the email add...

Agile development experience has demonstrated how practical conditions and simple processes foster highly-performant teams that produce sustainable results. A Small-World View Here are some of the "rules-of-thumb" that contribute to success: A small number of people, no more than can be fed by two pizzas Everyone in the same room with no walls and barriers Lots of collaborative tools, include shared computers, full wall visuals, and whiteboards Optimal mutual availability and accountability Full awareness of roles and capabilities Easily communicate with all members Maximum opportunity for serendipity and knowledge sharing Everyone focused on a single well understood project No personnel turnover Beyond the Ideal Of course, we all would love to have the conditions that accelerate effective teamwork as described above. The reality is that people are constantly moving, often collaborating across corporate and geographic boundaries, and working on a variety of projects in very...

This artifact from Xplane is a terrific combination of several areas I have been covering on this blog: image from Xplane - full pdf version available It's another example of how Xplane creatively combines graphics and text into content-rich, single-page visualizations to produce clear and powerful communication vehicles. Over the years this company has been a great source of communication ideas and inspiration. It highlights the disruptive dynamics and scaling capabilities of social networking . It demonstrates how social networks are far more than merely relationship building tools and trivia exchange centers. In fact they are extremely efficient engines for raising money and driving revenue . No Rocket Science There's nothing terribly new here, social networking and word-of-mouth dynamics have been impacting business and society since the rise of the first human communities. The exciting difference is the emerging visibility of these networks and the ability to observ...

Most significant software development projects feel more like a ride on a roller-coaster than a managed success. We lay out the track, check that everyone's strapped in, and scream our way through the out-of-control ride. However, unlike the amusement park counterpart, we feel more frustrated than exhilarated when we step back out on the platform. The Power of SCRUM Does it have to be this way? Discipline and good engineering are definitely lacking in many contexts, but even where these are rigorously applied, there is ample dissatisfaction from excessive delays, lack of creativity, and the inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Perhaps there is an alternative that gives us the best of both worlds -- discipline for the known challenges and adaptability for the emerging ones? Enter Scrum , a set of software development practices and roles that use agile principles to empower teams to delivery high value on time. Combining flexible requirements prioritization techniques,...

We've become experts at managing what we know. To achieve our goals, we break down the work and carefully measure our progress. We squeeze out efficient business practices and powerful system architecture through rigorous planning, testing and execution. But it's not good enough. Are we not often blindsided by the unforeseen? And isn't it true that most of the really valuable discoveries seem to be things we inadvertently trip over, almost by happenstance? Managing Complexity Rather than relegating these circumstances to luck or fate, complexity science offers us some insights into how to manage the unknown. This is the premise of the recent HBR article published by Dave Snowden and Mary Boone, entitled " A Leader's Framework for Decision Making ". The authors suggest that by identifying the context of a business situation, leaders can consciously choose an appropriate management approach: Simple , in which the relationship between cause and effect is obv...

Chaotic Behaviour When faced with complexity, many organizations and individuals resort to primal behavior. The queasiness of being out of control often generates these symptoms: Baby Throwing (along with the bath water). Wholesale abandonment of what was not working along with what was starting to work. The greater the sense of panic, the more frenetic the thrashing between various strategic initiatives. Each of these cycles is often accompanied with a fresh crop of executive managers. Paralysis. Lack of confidence in decision-making. A despair-ridden death march as profit margins slowly vaporize and innovative opportunities flit by ungrasped. Fascism. Charismatic leaders riding the waves of popular paranoia for personal benefit for questionable agendas. The shifting sands of complexity provide poor footholds for accountability and objective measurement. Cynicism . Change fatigue and the inability to connect with meaningful purpose often rapidly diffuses a creative workfo...