Uncommon Sense: Out of the box thinking for an in the box world
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense is an interesting collection of opinion pieces taken from his silicom.com blog through to around 2004. While you can read much of the material (and catch later articles) in his blog archives, the book does enhance the content will a liberal scattering of charts and also some additional commentary.Some of the topics are evergreen, such as the failures of the education system, and the gap that often exists between the actual and the perceived in conventional wisdom. Some are specific to a point in time, like his pre-occupation with the 3G bandwidth auction debacle. Certainly worth grabbing a copy for a thought provoking read, and ample encouragement to add his blog to my reader for continued entertainment. Cochrane also has a nice practice of introducing many of his articles with a related quote. One of my favourites is from Douglas Adams: Technology is the name we give to stuff that doesn't work properly yet. |
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Looking down your tailpipe from level 56
The RSAF Black Knights got the nod to perform at this years National Day celebrations, which means aerobatics between the buildings in the CBD. Yeehaw!
Now, I've been in Singapore long enough to know that NDP celebration preparations are taken seriously, and you never have less than 4 practices of anything (including fireworks, to everyone's great enjoyment).
So with about two months to go, its seems the RSAF have started daily practice flying around the city. From my desk on level 56, I get a stunning view of the F-16s fly by at arms reach and then get thrown into a 180 degree climb. Stunning.
Looking forward to the next two months of this. Oh, and NDP itself;-)
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Doing one thing at a time
James Shore discussed Agile Release Planning on this recent PM podcast, and it was refreshing to hear the benefits of agile pitched to a product management audience.
Like the best ideas, the tenets of agile appear almost too simple to be true. "Master of the bleeding obvious" Basil Fawlty would say. Yet most organisations seem structurally incapable of behaving along these lines.
James' presentation is very entertaining, and well worth a listen. He keeps the agenda short and well tuned to a PM audience. Although the ideas are born from a software environment, they are largely transferable to other domains. A discussion of five concepts to help you increase the value you deliver in business:
- Work on one project at a time .. it improves your ROI
- Release early and often .. get to market faster with a minimum, but valuable feature-set. Not only do you get to take advantage of the real customer voice sooner, but, again, better ROI.
- Adapt your plans .. to slavishly avoid change is to confound the opportunity to increase the value of your work as new things are learned along the way
- Conduct experiments .. your project can have many outcomes, and you will never know which is best unless you test options, collect data, and analyse
- Plan at the last responsible moment .. avoid costly planning that is basically trying to predict the future (unsuccessfully). The later the decision, the more information you will have available to make a good decision.
Here's my version of the graphic to illustrate the point:
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