2010.05.20
Email Analytics
During the past six months I've been drowning in email.
I spend a large part of my day responding to email messages and filing
incoming messages I consider important.
Yet I'm falling behind
and this affects the quality of my work:
I sometimes delay responding to important messages.
Followng Peter Drucker's dictum
"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it",
I decided to write a tool to analyze my incoming and outgoing
email messages.
Continue reading "Email Analytics"Last modified: Thursday, May 20, 2010 12:40 am
2010.04.07
Ron Heifetz on Crisis Leadership
Earlier today I had the privilege to attend a lecture on
crisis management by the Harvard Senior Lecturer
Ron Heifetz.
Here is a list of points that struck me
(in the form of slightly edited tweets),
and my view of their relevance to software development.
Continue reading "Ron Heifetz on Crisis Leadership"Last modified: Wednesday, April 7, 2010 11:31 pm
2010.03.12
Email's Ten by Ten Law
I drown in email and my aspirations for handling it are becoming increasingly
lame.
In the 1980s my goal used to be an empty mailbox at the end of each
session.
During the 1990s the goal became to empty the mailbox by the end of the day.
But tasks I couldn’t complete within the day accumulated, so in the 2000s
I just tried to have only so many messages as could fit in a window without
a scrollbar, so that I could immediately scan what I had to do.
Nowadays my modest goal is to keep the size of my mailbox below 100
messages, and I succeed in that only half of the time.
Continue reading "Email's Ten by Ten Law"Last modified: Friday, March 12, 2010 11:52 am
2009.10.21
Basic Etiquette of Technical Communication
Parents spend years trying to teach their children to be polite, and some of us had to learn at school how to properly address an archbishop. Yet, it seems that advice on courteousness and politeness in technical communication is in short supply; most of us learn these skills through what is euphemistically called “on the job training.” With enough bruises on my back to demonstrate the amount and variety of my experience in this area (though not my skill), here are some of the things I’ve learned.
Continue reading "Basic Etiquette of Technical Communication"Last modified: Sunday, December 27, 2009 6:43 pm
2009.08.28
The Price of Cheap Labor
The strange entries I've found over the past two weeks I've been
researching a large database are innumerable.
Some addresses, like Wastington, DC are simply annoying,
while others, like Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4 United States, are
mildly amusing.
It's clear to me that the database has been populated by the massive
application of a cheap labor force.
This is happening all too often, and I think it is a mistake.
Continue reading "The Price of Cheap Labor"Last modified: Friday, August 28, 2009 6:32 pm
2009.04.01
Open Source Opens up for Business
Today, as I was reading the
sourceforge.net
monthly update,
I was impressed by the number of business-related software in the top-25
project list.
I was sure this wasn't always the case,
so I dug up the corresponding
the top-25 projects at the beginning of 2006
to refresh my memory.
The differences are profound.
Continue reading "Open Source Opens up for Business"Last modified: Wednesday, April 1, 2009 9:30 am
2008.11.10
Robert Kaplan on Strategy Execution
Today I attended a presentation by
Robert S. Kaplan,
a Professor of Leadership Development at the
Harvard Business School,
on using strategy maps and balanced scorecards in a strategy execution system.
Dr. Kaplan managed to distill 15 years of research and its application by
the world's leading companies into a fascinating 90 minute talk.
These are my notes.
Continue reading "Robert Kaplan on Strategy Execution"Last modified: Monday, November 10, 2008 12:34 am
2008.09.16
Central Planning Hurts Research
Today I was invited to contribute to the European Commission
Information Society's
public consultation
that will be used to draft (in the Commission's words)
a new strategy for ICT research and innovation aiming is to put European
ICT industry, especially SMEs, to the fore of the race for global
competitiveness.
I believe that the Commission's approach towards research planning
and funding is fundamentally wrong.
Continue reading "Central Planning Hurts Research"Last modified: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 3:07 pm
2008.07.16
Eric K. Clemons on Monetizing the Net Without Advertising
Earlier today I attended a very interesting and entertaining talk that
Eric K. Clemons,
Professor of Operations and Information Management and Management
at Wharton,
gave on Internet business models that don't rely on advertising.
Continue reading "Eric K. Clemons on Monetizing the Net Without Advertising"Last modified: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 4:34 pm
2008.05.17
A Visit at BMW's Leipzig Factory
Yesterday I had a chance to tour the BMW Leipzig factory.
It was a unique experience, in which I witnessed
the sophistication of modern production methods,
and the most well-organized complex human undertaking I have seen first hand.
The factory literally runs like a clockwork, eerily bringing to my mind
the descriptions of Mars's factories in Bogdanov's science fiction novel
Red Star.
Continue reading "A Visit at BMW's Leipzig Factory"Last modified: Saturday, May 17, 2008 3:20 am
2006.12.13
Secure Passports and IT Problems
In 2003 Greece, in response to new international requirements for secure travel documents, revised the application process and contents of its passports. From January 1st 2006 passports are no longer issued by the prefectures, but by the police, and from August 26th passports include an RFID chip. The new process has been fraught with problems; many of these difficulties stem from the IT system used for issuing the passports.
On December 12th, the Greek Ombudsman
(human rights section) issued a special 22-page report on the problems of the new passport issuing process.
The report is based on 43 official citizen complaints.
Continue reading "Secure Passports and IT Problems"Last modified: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 1:25 pm
2006.11.22
So Long as there's a Jingle in your Head, Television isn't Free
Yesterday I switched from an ancient version of the "free" Adobe Reader to
the current version 7.0.
I spent the morning studying some fairly tricky technical documents.
Within that interval I often caught my eyes glancing to the top right of the
Adobe Reader's display window where
an advert button flashed as it changed its content.
Needless to say, this change of focus interrupted my train of thought,
and got me out of "flow mode".
Continue reading "So Long as there's a Jingle in your Head, Television isn't Free"Last modified: Saturday, November 25, 2006 6:19 pm
2006.10.11
Web Page Hits, Amazon.com's Sales Rank, and Actual Sales
Over the past three years I've been collecting the
amazon.com Sales Rank for my book
Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective,
and (lately) also for its sequel
Code Quality: The Open Source Perspective.
Yesterday I mapped the sales rank to actual sales, and correlated those
with significant events and hits on the book's web page.
Continue reading "Web Page Hits, Amazon.com's Sales Rank, and Actual Sales"Last modified: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 10:20 am
2006.09.17
NASSCOM Quality Summit 2006
Last week I attended NASSCOM's 2006 Quality Summit in Bangalore, India.
There I gave a tutorial on tooling with open source software, and
delivered a talk on Global Software Development in the FreeBSD Project.
It was an edifying trip.
Continue reading "NASSCOM Quality Summit 2006"Last modified: Sunday, September 17, 2006 10:35 pm
2006.07.19
Efficient Human Multitasking
I sometimes hear colleagues complaining that they can't get anything done,
because they have too many tasks in their head.
I've found that in order to increase the efficiency of my work
I need a moderately large selection of pending tasks.
This allows me to match the type of work I can do at a given moment
with a task in the most optimal way.
Continue reading "Efficient Human Multitasking"Last modified: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 0:00 am
