Category Archives: Software Development

Bringing Lean Principles to Service Industries

Posted on October 27, 2007 by John Hunter

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries by Julia Hanna “One of the important lessons we’ve seen on the ground is how Wipro approached the launch of this lean initiative,” Staats says. “They didn’t come out with big banners and say, … Continue reading →

Posted in India, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Software Development

IT Operations as a Competitive Advantage

Posted on October 26, 2007 by John Hunter

Operations is a competitive advantage… (Secret Sauce for Startups!) The example above is the tale of two Web 2.0 startups scaling to 20 systems during their first three months. The first team starts writing software and installing systems as they … Continue reading →

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

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room

Posted on October 23, 2007 by John Hunter

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. This means that if you have a great idea, you always have time to … Continue reading →

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

Kaizen – Yahoo Mail Style

Posted on September 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Yahoo Mail Innovates, Gmail Stagnates Yahoo Mail has begun rolling out of beta after releasing an onslaught of innovative feature improvements along the way. On the other hand, a whopping three years into their beta release, Gmail remains one of … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | 1 Comment

Six Sigma in Software Development

Posted on August 13, 2007 by John Hunter

Six Sigma makes inroads in software development organizations “A lot of big companies are developing their own software engineering variance of Six Sigma training,” said Siviy, “putting software-specific examples into the normal Six Sigma curriculum.” However, she said, it’s early … Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, IT, Management, Six sigma, Software Development

Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation

Posted on August 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Marissa Mayer speech at Stanford on innovation at Google (23 minutes, 26 minutes question and answers). She leads the product management efforts on Google’s search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management, Popular, quote, Software Development, webcast | 6 Comments

Hiring: Silicon Valley Style

Posted on August 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Interviews on how to hire in Silicon Valley. I especially like Guy Kawasaki’s comment – “the key to getting great people to work for you is to have a great product. That is why Google does so well. That is … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Google, IT, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking, webcast | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Funding Google Gadget Development

Posted on June 28, 2007 by John Hunter

Google Gadgets are small tools and toys that integrate with iGoogle. Google is funding developers to work on creating gadgets through Google Gadget Ventures. Great idea. They offer: 1. Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Fun, Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | 4 Comments

Moving Jobs to Silicon Valley from India

Posted on May 23, 2007 by John Hunter

India grows up [the broken link was removed]: The costs of having two offices, which are twelve time zones apart, is significant. People in both offices frequently had conference calls at 10pm and midnight every night (as a result the … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, India, IT, Software Development | 3 Comments

Predicting Improves Learning

Posted on May 10, 2007 by John Hunter

The Power of Prediction by Jared Spool: By asking these questions up front, we give the team members something to focus on. When a participant gets stuck somewhere they predicted, it stands out. They can take pleasure in knowing they … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Software Development | Tagged ,