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...

I try to apply the principles I advocate not only in large things, but also in small. My business cards are a good example. When we design something, we need to consider the purpose of the thing we design. The purpose of my business card is to: • make it easy to contact me • make me memorable • make the card holder want to contact me The first item is easy. The contact information on my business card is no different from that of any other business card: Name, occupation, and contact info. I have stacks of business cards I've got from people I've met, whose faces I don't remember. I often take a snapshot with a camera when I meet someone for the first time, and add the picture to the address book in my computer. This is a bit of a hassle, so it was a pretty obvious idea to add a picture of myself to the card. I chose a picture of me when I am working. The idea is to show that I do work if you hire me. (The picture also shows that I drink tea while working, but I hope that do...

Traditionally, projects have four success criteria: scope, cost, time, and quality. The focus tend to be on scope, cost, and time. Quality is quietly forgotten when the project is evaluated, unless the project deliverables malfunction. Agile software development methods have a different success criteria: Maximum Return On Investment (ROI). This tends to create a bit of confusion. Nobody knows how to measure ROI, so management sticks to specifying scope, cost, and time in contracts, usually with a wish for high quality, but nothing about how to measure it. This is a bad idea. Here is why the traditional success criteria do not work: Consider two software development projects A and B. Both have the following original assumptions: Cost: 2 million Euro Time: 12 months Scope: 60 use cases When we evaluate the projects after they have been executed, we find that: Project A: Cost: 3 million Euro Time: 18 months Scope: 52 use cases Project B: Cost: 1.9 million Euro Time: 11 months Scope: 60 us...

I recently made a response to a post about time-boxing in the Agile Coaching group at LinkedIn. As it turns out, the author of the post was well aware of the Parkinson's Law angle, and so are probably most agile team leaders. However, even if you do know about Parkinson's Law, you might be interested in the other reason. It is (in my opinion) more important, but less well understood. Here is my response to the LinkedIn post: Two reasons. One is Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law Parkinson's Law isn't scientifically proven. It is just an observation about the results of human behavior. The other reason is also a law, but a scientifically proven one. Little's Law says that for a stable system: t = I / T t = Lead time I = Number of items T = Throughput (Items processed per time unit) Note that if you want to reduce t, as in reduce project lea...

This videocast is the first in a new series on modern business leadership, organization, and management. The first episode focuses on what you can do to quickly turn your company around if it took a nosedive during the financial crisis. Among other things, I present a two-day turnaround schedule. Is two days to save a company in trouble realistic? Yes! Saving a company can, and often is, a long, hard struggle, but the turnaround can be very quick. A quick turnaround gives people a bit of fighting spirit. It aligns everyone in the company, and creates opportunities. My experience is that there are almost always opportunities.

Following a discussion about management in a LinkedIn forum, I got an email with a thank you note, and a very good question: You have sent me on a quest and given me a useful map, but this journey is going to take some time and have to be scheduled. Are you willing to pass on any pearls of wisdom from your journey? I do not have a very good answer, I am afraid, but I did my very best. Here is what I wrote: The following works for me. The important thing is not to do the same things, but to do what works for you: Here is what I am doing right now: I study Hoshin Kanri, Lean policy deployment. Toyota is one of very few companies able to execute a strategy well. It is my opinion that Hoshin Kanri and Lean Accounting (or similar practices) are critical success factors when implementing Lean. Also very useful insights if one is interested in Strategic Navigation, or anything else which involves deploying policy. When you read a good book, check the references at the back for interesting re...

I just noticed that Bruce Neubauer, Associate Professor at Albany State University, has embedded two of my videocasts on his web page . (You need to scroll down a bit.) Neubauer has a videocast explaining how to use the Transformation Logic Tree, TLT. TLT is a program for creating all the trees in The Logical Thinking Process (TLTP). TLT is included on a DVD that comes with Bill Dettmer's book The Logical Thinking Process. Here is Neubauer's videocast:

Last Sunday I watched the first episode of Innovatörerna (The Innovators) on TV8. The Innovators is a reality show about two management experts that help companies in a crisis. (Once a show has been aired, it is available for watching at The Innovator's web site. In Swedish though, with no English caption.) If you have seen Gordon Ramsay take a restaurant at the brink of ruin and whip it into shape, you get the idea. The Innovators are Swedish though, so a whipping is when they say "we are disappointed with you". If they are very upset this may escalate into a devastating "we are really disappointed with you". In the first episode they helped F.O.V. Fabrics. F.O.V. Fabrics invented the airbag fabric eighteen years ago. At its heyday the company had 300 employees. Today only 75 are left. When the financial crisis hit the automotive industry, F.O.V. Fabrics saw its market collapse. They had to do something fast, or go out of business. The TV show The Innovators...

Long time, no blogging. I have been writing though. I finished the last appendices in my business strategy book Tempo! today. There is still some work to do: Some editing. Shouldn't be any major changes. Mostly fixing spelling. Index the whole thing. This will take a bit of work. The book weighs in at about 350 pages. Not too difficult though, just a bit tedious. Write a glossary Make some cover prototypes. A real artist should do the final cover, but I wan't to sketch out some ideas. Translate more chapters for my American and English proofreaders. I wrote Tempo! in Swedish. (In hindsight this was probably a mistake.) You might be wondering what Tempo! is about. It is about a business strategy method known as Constraints Management, or Strategic Navigation. The method was created by Bill Dettmer and is an adaptation of John Boyd's Maneuver Conflict, with The Logical Thinking Process used as the primary planning tool. It is a dynamite package, especially for companies th...