Category Archives: IT

Using Google to Eliminate Some IT Costs

Posted on March 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Computer Science 101: A Case Study In Google Applications [the broken link was removed]: Sannier plans to shut down the university’s own e-mail servers later this spring. When that happens, thousands more will move over. The portal provides access to other functions of Google Apps, including calendar (which users can now share online, something they couldn’t do before), instant messaging, and search. Within the next two months, Sannier expects to offer personalized home pages and Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets applications … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management | Tagged , , , ,

Eric Schmidt Podcast – Google Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Posted on March 20, 2007 by John Hunter

iinnovate podcast interview with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. “Normal sales quotas” – oops maybe Google can learn from others in this area. I found it interesting that Eric Schmidt teaches at Standford even while being the CEO of Google, because as he says he learns from students questions. The podcast series, done by 2 Stanford students, has quite an impressive list of, I guess, visiting speakers at Stanford: Andy Grove, Alex Counts, David Kelley… via: Eric Schmidt Interviewed … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management, webcast | 1 Comment

Total Quality Software Development

Posted on March 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Total Quality Service podcast by Michael Tiemann, Redhat Software. Do we offshore the problem to somebody else, you know get more bad software cheaper? Or do we fix the problem? I think we fix the problem. Now, in going to Japan and talking about this software quality problem it was pretty obvious I had to go and study Deming… I think the first 10 minutes of the podcast is valuable to anyone. The last 8 minutes might not appeal to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, IT, Software Development, Systems thinking, webcast

Dell Innovation

Posted on February 25, 2007 by John Hunter

Dell has been taking some interesting actions recently. Several months ago they started blogging and interacting with bloggers. Those steps have been interesting since few other companies of their size have taken such action (nothing amazing, but seem much beyond the common corporate, totally out of touch attempts to adopt new technology – they seemed to be committed to actually try to learn about interactive web thinking). They recently created IdeaStorm to Turn Up the Volume of Customer Voice [the … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, IT, Management | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Interview with Mary Poppendieck

Posted on February 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Lean for Software: Interview with Mary Poppendieck: We start by asking people to draw a Value Stream Map. You start with a customer problem-need request, and you go to where that request is filled. So, you put on “customer glasses”, and now I want to watch what happens to that problem until it is back and the customer problem is solved. You draw a map or a timeline of everything that happens from the time the customer request comes in … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development | 1 Comment

Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service

Posted on February 20, 2007 by John Hunter

Once again Joel Spolsky spins a great post with, Seven steps to remarkable customer service. Read it. It’s crucial that tech support have access to the development team. This means that you can’t outsource tech support: they have to be right there at the same street address as the developers, with a way to get things fixed. This idea is powerful yet ignored by most companies. Management must look at the best way to improve the entire system not to … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, IT, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Kaizen Online

Posted on February 15, 2007 by John Hunter

Kaizen, That Continuous Improvement Strategy, Finds Its Ideal Environment by Hal R. Varian Kaizen doesn’t just mean a business should keep trying new things. Rather, it refers to a disciplined process of systematic exploration, controlled experimentation and then painstaking adoption of the new procedures. In the original formulation, kaizen was applied to manufacturing, where experimentation could determine whether a new process resulted in quality improvements or cost savings in a matter of months. … The most successful online businesses are … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Management Articles, Software Development | 1 Comment

Toyota’s Nick Dieltiens Discussing Lean Ideas

Posted on January 29, 2007 by John Hunter

Another YouTube video on Toyota Management (produced by a software vendor selling to Toyota Europe): Toyota’s Nick Dieltiens Discussing Lean Techniques. He is responsible for strategic planing for Lexus Europe and was previously for the lean operations office for Toyota and Lexus Europe. He discusses adopting lean thinking in sales and marketing. the consultant’s web site includes another webcast [the broken link was removed] with Nick Dieltiens. In a previous post we comment on a good article reviewing Toyota IT … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Lean thinking, webcast

Knowledge Management – Management is Prediction

Posted on January 21, 2007 by John Hunter

This presentation web video discusses the idea of managing corporate information: Seamless Information Capture and Discovery for Corporate Memory [the broken link was removed]. The video focuses on discussing technical solutions. The most important factor to me, is the value to improving management. The technology discussed here eventually could help lead to the adoption of Dr. Ackoff’s ideas on capturing corporate decision making. Then that will allow evaluating decisions for systemic weakness and strengths to improve decision making. Ackoff’s ideas … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, IT, Quality tools, Systems thinking | 5 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #3

Posted on January 16, 2007 by John Hunter

More links to interesting management improvement blog posts. Lean IT – what comes first, technology or waste reduction? by Kent Blumberg – “rather than pushing technology on people and processes (the traditional top-down approach), Toyota looks to the people and processes to pull the technology they need to support their decision making.” Who Is GM’s Customer? by Dan Markovitz – “The average car buyer can’t calculate the cost of GM’s excess inventory, of course, but they don’t need to. That … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Carnival, IT, Management | 2 Comments

Innovation Examples

Posted on January 11, 2007 by John Hunter

Two examples from 37signals: first, Pioneer Theater. Good idea. I am stretching to call it innovation, today, maybe 5 years ago it was. Today I think any reasonably sized theater should have something like this in place. The interface is a bit confused. At first the views didn’t seem to correspond to what I would expect when I click on various seats [the broken link was removed]. Then I read a little closer and the view you see is shown … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Management | Tagged | 2 Comments

Interviewing and Hiring Programmers

Posted on January 11, 2007 by John Hunter

Interviewing and Hiring by Tom Van Vleck “Let’s take a break from talking to people. Why don’t you have a seat in this empty office, and write a small program. Use any language you want to. The program can do anything you’d like. I’ll be back in about 30 minutes, and ask you to explain the program to me.” … It seemed reasonable, if the job was programming, to ask people how they felt about actually doing some. And sure, … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, IT, Management, Software Development | 4 Comments

How Do You Run a Business Without Managers

Posted on January 10, 2007 by John Hunter

Ask the CHO: How do you run a business without managers It seems that a lot of the problems seem to come from low to middle management and as someone who is looking to start my own software company I don’t want this to happen in my organization. A no managers approach seems pretty appealing. … So rather than have presidents, vice presidents and managers, all employees had an equal say in running the company. This was backed up by … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, IT, Management | 1 Comment

Competing On The Basis Of Speed

Posted on January 8, 2007 by John Hunter

Competing On The Basis Of Speed (webcast) [the broken link was removed] by Mary Poppendieck discussing complexity, queuing theory, and constant innovation. Google posts presentations given at the Googleplex (including this one). In this one, Mary presents lean ideas as they related to software development. Related: post on software development – lean software development – articles by the Poppendiecks – Competing on the Basis of Time

Posted in Google, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development, webcast | 1 Comment

The IT Iceberg Secret

Posted on December 29, 2006 by John Hunter

The Iceberg Secret, Revealed by Joel Spolsky It’s pretty clear that programmers think in one language, and MBAs think in another. I’ve been thinking about the problem of communication in software management for a while, because it’s pretty clear to me that the power and rewards accrue to those rare individuals who know how to translate between Programmerese and MBAese. … Customers Don’t Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want. It’s just never going to … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Software Development | 2 Comments

Change Your Name

Posted on December 28, 2006 by John Hunter

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 leave customer service agents to try and explain. And then this happens: When he called Best Buy one customer service agent even suggested he change his name Now that is great 🙂 Charles Yu: “I said well, I think that … Continue reading →

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