Saturday, April 10, 2004

Short description/reminder of defining project release criteria: http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/archive/2004_03_01_mpdarchive.html#107911673624585476 Want to make sure you complete your project as early as possible? Define release criteria. Release criteria are the few critically important objective criteria that define what "done" means for your project. Sometimes, it's a combination of date, defects, and feature completion. Sometimes it's just the date. The formula for defining release criteria is: Define project success. Define what's critically important that this project accomplish. Draft release criteria that are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Trackable. Gain Consensus on the criteria from management and the project team. Manage the project to the criteria. Easy to describe, not always easy to do. Read more about release criteria here. For ideas about what to consider measuring, remember the six sides of the project. Comments10:20:34 PM

Great article at http://www.worthwhilemag.com/entry/2004/04/09/the_real_role_of_powerpoint.php.  It really hit home because I had a conversation this week with someone who was asking if I used PowerPoint a lot.  The answer is,...no, not right now.  I do think there's a time and a place, but that it shouldn't take the place of having actual conversations with your users.  You can present and have your audience look at you occasionally too!  Comments9:59:08 PM

Block out the noise & listen to yourself. I'm finally getting around to reading Roadtrip Nation, which has been in my stack of to-read books for a couple months. It's by a couple college age guys who traveled around the country interviewing people who had "successfully defined their... [The Occupational Adventure (sm) Blog] Pointing to a book I want to check out and this great quote: "The roadtrip taught us that we didn't have to build a life around money, around what our parents wanted us to do, or around what society deemed acceptable. The key out there was to block out the noise and listen to ourselves. We were now sure that we were not going to be doctors or consultants. Those were not our roads, so why would we travel down them?"   Comments11:45:09 AM

Patrick Lencioni on Building Great Teams. Today, Patrick Lencioni came to Microsoft to talk about The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Death By Meeting. If you're a Microsoft employee, you can find the video of the lecture streamed from ResNet. I've been a huge fan... [John Porcaro: mktg@msft] Great summary/breakdown by John.  Being able to help your teams function better is a great step in your career path as many "smart" people miss it and that miss holds the company back. I also love John's book-share idea... Comments11:40:11 AM

My dad sent me the url to this java-based slider tile puzzle, and it has killed half my work day so far. He solved it in 48 moves. I guess 44 is the minimum. I can't solve it! If everyone who reads Boing Boing spends ten minutes on it, it will result in 312.5 man-days of wasted time! (It didn't work in Safari for me; I had to use IE) Link Related... http://www.boingboing.net/2004/04/09/good_time_waster_sim.html Seriously, i can't do it...i'm missing something.... Comments11:21:29 AM

© Copyright 2004 Rebecca Schwoch. Last update: 10/15/2004; 5:01:03 PM.