Ideas are sometimes described as memes because they can spread like genes. I’m wondering how this applies to brainstorming. I’ve always associated brainstorming with groups of several people and techniques such as Six Hats. But is this the best way? In nature, genes are combined from two sources. This is repeated over successive generations. How…… Continue reading Brainstorming and Evolution
Product Owner Essentials
From “Getting Real” (37signals). Underdo Your Competition Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope Less Mass Lower Your Cost of Change Embrace Constraints Half, Not Half-Assed Start With No Hidden Costs Rinse and Repeat The book contains loads of other useful advice too. Genius.
Bottom Up Organisation and Innovation
Google and Facebook where the vanguard but now it’s taking off. Here are just a few of the books on the subject published in the last few months. Adapt by economist Tim Harford (FT, BBC). Inspiring. Original. Great stories. A classic. Loose: The future of business is letting go The Power of Pull. Good intro on…… Continue reading Bottom Up Organisation and Innovation
Taking Chatter To The Next Level
I’m interested in organisations becoming more fluid. Chatter offers a way to do this. People’s “About Me” can be annotated so that a machine can extract relevant data and generate a multi-faceted org chart that automatically evolves. It could show not just the org hierarchy, but who is working on what products, who shares the…… Continue reading Taking Chatter To The Next Level
How To Make Bonuses Work
The Bad News There is no way to directly measure a team’s impact on the business. The most effective use of bonuses is for sales people. The more they sell, the bigger the bonus, right? But even this isn’t direct. The amount they sell might be due more to the health of the economy and…… Continue reading How To Make Bonuses Work
What The Financial Crisis And IT Projects Have In Common
Rock star economist Tim Harford explains one of the big reasons for the financial crisis – tightly coupled systems. Its also the danger lurking in nuclear reactors, big IT projects and most importantly, dominoes (the sport not the pizza). Everything below is from this interview with Tim (my emphasis) … … there was a weird interaction…… Continue reading What The Financial Crisis And IT Projects Have In Common
Content is King
Content is king. If your content is good then users will return and they will bring a friend. SEO can drive users to your site in droves but unless the content is good they won’t stick. Don’t get me wrong, SEO is big, but it’s not the answer. It’s like a restaurant that caters for…… Continue reading Content is King
The Scientist
You are measuring traffic, right? Number of hits. Unique users. Good, just checking. Do you measure the impact of each feature? Metro don’t (watch this space). Here’s an example. We recently redesigned our masthead – the header, logo, background, navigation, search tool and banner space. It took us quite a while. Some people thought this was…… Continue reading The Scientist
Guardian. News lists. Product lists.
The guardian is opening up some of it’s news lists to the public. Maybe we should do the same with some of our product feature lists.
Testing. Usability. Awesome.
The dev team recently got showed up by the newspaper iPad team. Their usability testing was awesome. Firstly, they actually did some usability testing. Secondly, the subjects were from a range of teams and “ranks”. Thirdly, the tests were with one subject and one observer at a time. As a subject, i found that this…… Continue reading Testing. Usability. Awesome.
Why products are like a works jolly to Paris
If you’ve ever been to Paris (or anywhere else) with 50 people you will know that the bigger the group the harder it is to get anything done or to get anywhere. The length of time it takes for the group to make a decision increases drastically with the number of people in the group.…… Continue reading Why products are like a works jolly to Paris