Category Archives: IT

Change Your Name

Best Buy Asks Man To Change Name [the broken link was removed]: Turns out if your last name is less than three letters, the online sign-up isn’t an option for you. Companies often put up barriers for no reason, then … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Sub-Optimize

From the “you call this agile?” department by Joel Spolsky: Yes, context switching is painful. Yes, you need to take into account the costs of context switching when you interrupt someone’s work. But every decision has pros and cons and … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking | 2 Comments

Five Pragmatic Practices

Becoming a Great Manager: Five Pragmatic Practices by Esther Derby [the broken link was removed] 1) Decide What To Do and What Not To Do Deciding what to do and what not to do helps focus efforts on the important … Continue reading

Posted in IT, Management, Management Articles, Software Development | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Investing in Six Sigma

Bank of America: Investing in Six Sigma [the broken link was removed] by Thomas Hoffman: To help the bank’s IT organization align more strategically with its businesses, Desoer has challenged her IT staff to learn more about the bank’s external … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Six sigma, Software Development | Tagged , | Comments Off on Investing in Six Sigma

No Customer Focus

John Battelle writes the excellent searchblog. A recent post, Rant: The Comcast HD DVR Is Simply, Terribly Awful, provides another example of a company lacking customer focus. See the comments for even more confirmation of the lack of customer focus. … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Fun, IT, Management | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Management Improvement Search Engine

Google has launched a nice new feature that allows users to create customized search results. I have talked about this idea before: Improve Google. Last year I posted about Rollyo, which allowed what Google now does (using Yahoo for the … Continue reading

Posted in Creativity, curiouscat.com, Fun, Google, IT, Management | Tagged , | Comments Off on Management Improvement Search Engine

Lessons from Toyota’s IT Strategy

Another interesting post from Panta Rei: Lessons from Toyota’s IT Strategy [the broken link was removed]: In order to use IT effectively as a tool, we think that it is important for the top management to not see IT as … Continue reading

Posted in IT, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Lessons from Toyota’s IT Strategy

Management Consulting – Web Site Evidence

In, How Wipro Adapted the Toyota Production System to IT Work [the broken link was removed], Jon Miller highlights several keys to adopting lean thinking: involve everyone, learn and then do, and learn together. In Wipro’s case they should also … Continue reading

Posted in IT, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Management Consulting – Web Site Evidence

Designing In Errors

TiVo’s “self-destruct button” destructs [the broken link was removed] In so doing, they’ve created a bunch of potential failures in which the user is locked out of her own equipment. It’s like those movies where an accident or a bad … Continue reading

Posted in IT, Management, Quality tools | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Hiring the Right People

The job market is an inefficient market. There are many reasons for this including relying on specification (this job requires a BS in Computer Science – no Bill Gates you don’t meet the spec) instead of understanding the system. Insisting … Continue reading

Posted in Career, Customer focus, IT, Management, Performance Appraisal, Popular | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments