Kallokain

Drar Apple, and Mr. Jobs, I like nu iPhone, I really do, but there is à problem. I spell fairly well, but the spell checker jeeps changing what I write into gibberish. IT is à chore giving all the mistakes I have to correctly. There seems to be no way to turné the misspelling program off. Since the iPhone is à network device, maybe the off switch is at your end. If IT is, could you please TURN THE DAMNED THING OFF, BECAUSE I AM GOING CRAZY! Sorry for the outburst. Kind Regards, Henrik Mårtensson Sent from my iPhone

I like my MacBook and my iPhone a lot, but there is no such thing as a perfect system. I have been experimenting a bit with network mapping lately, and it occurred to me to map how my Mac and my iPhone manage notes. The following diagram is the result: As you can see, I have ignored MobileMe. Despite this, the map is more than a little bit messy. For example, iPhone notes sync to the mail program on my MacBook. This seems more than a little bit bizarre. There is more: The Mac comes with a Note widget and a Notes application. Both of these are entirely separate from other notes. Notes in other programs, like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, are also separate from everything else. Notes and ToDo items are separate things, but it could be argued that a ToDo item is a note with a due date. If so, ToDo items should be better integrated with other notes. Of course, a voice memo is also a kind of note, and could also be treated as a note. Wouldn't it be nice if notes: could be shared between...

Bill Reichert guest blogged at Guy Kawasaki's blog about an interesting visit to the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. The title of the post was Top Ten Lessons from the US Navy: Management Lessons on an Aircraft Carrier at Sea , but I could not resist using a quote from the captain of the ship as the title of this post. Well worth reading. When I began studying military organizational and leadership models some years ago, I was astounded by what I found: focus on people, flexible organizational structures, and leadership models compatible with Agile software development. I have written a couple of articles about the IOHAI leadership model, Deconstructing IOHAI and One More Loop Through the IOHAI Hoop . Those articles are a bit technical, but they enabled me to write a much simpler description of IOHAI in my book Tempo. I wish these ideas could take hold in the business community, I mean really take hold. Once you get used to them, they are simple, natural, and very powerful. (They a...

Yep, I opened Twitter account: http://twitter.com/Kallokain Took about an hour to get a follower. I am going to ramp up my social networking presence over the next few months. Sent from my iPhone

It may be easier to find Wi-Fi in rural Transylvania than in Halmstad. Annoying when you are working. It worked out all right thanks to Scandic Hotel. They let me connect without à charge, even though I wasn't a guest at the hotel. Thanks! Sent from my iPhone

I commented a bit on Johan Trouwe's post about the dilemma of the innovation system on the Swedish west coast. Johan's post and my comment are here . Both Johan's post and my comment are in Swedish. Johan is the CEO of the west coast chamber of commerce in Sweden. He wrote that he doesn't really get the relationships between the actors in the Swedish west coast innovation system. After having a look at it, I wrote that I don't get it either. I then suggested that maybe the focus should be on: teaching innovation techniques to employees in companies teaching managers how to listen to employees going from idea to project fast, so that good ideas aren't just forgotten after awhile I did take the opportunity to tout my own horn a bit, writing about my own innovations, both technological and management.

Ron Jeffries has written an excellent article on software project portfolio management: http://xprogramming.com/xpmag/kate-oneal-funding-susans-projects.htm It is well worth reading. Sent from my iPhone

Some interesting stuff on networks here .

Sometimes I get a little nostalgic about my former life as a software developer. David Vrensk gave me a tip about the following video. It is a powerful reminder that there can be value in taking a different approach. If you are a manger, ask one of your developers to write a Game of Life in Java or C#, and see how long it takes, and how much code must be written. Compare with this 7 minute video: Here is a link to the original web page on YouTube .

Yes! DZone picked up my Defining Kanban post . I admit it: I felt like a child at Christmas.

There has been a long thread in the kanbandev group at Yahoo about how to define what a kanban system is, and is not. Defining kanban is important because without an unambiguous definition it is difficult to discuss kanban. A kanban system is a system for process control. Kanban was invented by Taichi Ohno at Toyota more than fifty years ago. There are many types of kanban systems, for production processes, for administrative processes, for software development... All kanban systems have certain characteristics in common. We in the software community are new to kanban, and it is easy to get a bit too enthusiastic, and unintentionally change the meaning of kanban when we discuss it. It is my opinion that this would be unfortunate. One reason is that we dump a lot of knowledge that has been amassed under more than half a century. When we do that, we have to rediscover what other people have discovered before us. That slows us down, because we loose the ability to build further on the exi...

It is performance evaluation time in many companies. This can be stressful, both to the people being evaluated, and the people doing the evaluation. In companies adopting agile software development methods, the tension can be extraordinary. Individual performance evaluations run counter to agile philosophy, which emphasizes team performance over individual performance. However, managers and corporate leaders need to take a few steps back, and consider the impact performance evaluations have on the organization as a whole. Especially now, in the midst of a recession, it is important to look at a companies current policies to see if they can be improved, or if they are actually holding the company back. So, how can a manager evaluate policy? Performance evaluation policies can serve as an excellent example. I'll confine myself to discussing the so-called ‘rank and yank’ methods. These are performance reviews were employees are ranked using a forced ranking system. It usually looks so...