Archive - January 2011

JAN

Book Review: Best Service is No Service by Jaffe and Price

31 JAN 2011 | Posted in best practice, self service, service | Author Alex McLachlan

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This is an excellent book that ought to be compulsory reading for all companies with a customer service element, mostly because so many of them are so very far from providing even reasonable service.

The book gives clear, practical advice and loads of examples of where service has gone wrong and of best practice (plenty of examples from Amazon and first direct for instance in this category).

Also available: ebook version of

JAN

A Disaster of Quality

25 JAN 2011 | Posted in agile engineering techniques, agile methodology, Government, quality | Author Jason Smith |

1 Comment

I get to talk to organisations of all shapes and sizes about Agile methods and the key message I hear, especially in the public sector, is that Agile is about applying the best engineering techniques to software delivery. It isn’t. A focus on engineering techniques is attractive because they are easy to understand, they are relatively easy to implement and they produce higher quality deliverables – who could argue with that? Well, me, actually.

JAN

Book Review: Myself and Other More Important Matters by Charles Handy

17 JAN 2011 | Posted in books, Charles Handy

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Long recognised as one of the world’s leading business thinkers (over two million copies of his books have been sold around the world), in Myself and Other More Important Matters he leaves the management territory he has so effectively and influentially mapped in the past to explore the wider issues and dilemmas - both moral and creative - raised by the turning points of his long and successful life.

Here he investigates the big issues of how life can best be lived as they have emerged from the unfolding of his life and his unique and influential understanding of what really matters.

JAN

Important is not (necessarily) big

11 JAN 2011 | Posted in agile project management, Government, programmes | Author Jason Smith |

1 Comment

I sat through a thoroughly depressing presentation last week by a senior Government programme manager. He started, as is often the way, by explaining just how important he was – how many people he controlled, how massive his budget was and how his utterly colossal job title required an A4 sized business card.

JAN

Book Review: Leading Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck

05 JAN 2011 | Posted in lean, Poppendieck | Author admin

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Building on their breakthrough bestsellers Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit and Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash (Addison-Wesley Signature) Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s latest book shows software leaders and team members exactly how to drive high-value change throughout a software organisation - and make it stick.

They go far beyond generic implementation guidelines, demonstrating exactly how to make lean work in real projects, environments, and companies.

JAN

Knowledge Management on Intranets

04 JAN 2011 | Posted in business strategy, intranet, IT | Author Alex McLachlan

Jacob Nielsen's latest usability article "10 Best Intranets of 2011" includes some encouraging evidence that intranets are getting increased traction as platforms for sharing knowledge - using simplified features to deliver long promised knowledge management benefits.

It is also interesting to note that over the winning organisations, the average number of employees is 37,900 and the average intranet team size is 14.