Archive for November, 2009

Does it have to be Analysis -vs- Innovation?

Posted in Analysis, Article Review, Innovation on November 10th, 2009 by Paul McArdle – 4 Comments

I’ve recently posted about what some are calling the rise of the “Age of Analytics”, and also posted several times on innovation (such as this note about 5 “discovery skills”).

Not sure how I stumbled upon this article in Business Week – it’s titled “The Design of Business” and is written by Roger Martin (of Rotman School of Management) to coincide with the launch of his new book (which we have duly added to our Amazon cart and will review in due course). read more »

All software development is iterative (without slides)

Posted in 03 - Product Development, Design, Development, Event Review, Requirements Gathering on November 4th, 2009 by Paul McArdle – 3 Comments

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Well, 17 hours ago I was awake for an IEEE-organised Webinar featuring Kent Beck (founder of Three Rivers Institute) titled “Software G Forces:  The Effects of Acceleration” – so I’m beat!  Just another long day in a software start-up.

However I wanted to get this blog post up before it slipped my mind (please excuse me for any lack of polish in this one!)

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Book Review: Design Patterns, Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Posted in Book Review on November 4th, 2009 by Todd Bowles – 1 Comment
Design Patterns are a well known concept in Object-Oriented Design. They are structures that can be used to solved situations commonly encountered in OO design. Of course, being generalised structures, they have to be adapted to your specific situation, but I’m sure you get the idea. They are similar in concept to patterns as used by other crafts.
This book lists a number of patterns as documented by the authors, as well as a detailed explanation of each, applications for the pattern, examples where the pattern may be used (and other examples where the pattern is actually used in production software) and relationships with other patterns.

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Having the right focus at Industry Networking events

Posted in Article Review, Networking, Requirements Gathering on November 4th, 2009 by Paul McArdle – Be the first to comment

A few questions that I have been asked on a couple of occasions (e.g. after All-Energy and EUAA events) started me thinking – and what seems apparent is that some perhaps have the wrong impression of the purpose of being involved in events like this. read more »

Analysts Arise – the Analytics Age is Nigh!?

Posted in 01 - Leadership & Management, Article Review, Life-Long Learning, Personal Development on November 2nd, 2009 by Paul McArdle – 5 Comments

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Paul Klaptocz pointed me at this interesting blog post from Stephen Few entitled “Malcolm Gladwell, modern problems, and the analytics age”.

With us having read two of his books many months ago (Blink and the Tipping Point – sorry, no book reviews up yet) and having previously discussed the follow-on from his 3rd book (Outliers) in my post about the 10,000-hour rule, I was curious to read further. read more »

Sound Reasoning

Posted in Coaching on November 1st, 2009 by Paul McArdle – 2 Comments

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Back on 29th July, I had the good fortune of attending an event provided by the IIB entitled “Building the Resilient Company”.  I posted some comments about this at the time here.

During this event, I heard a presentation by Evan Fortune (one of the founders of Vision 6) and was impressed with his story.

In his presentation, Evan mentioned a couple of consultants/coaches they had utilised to work through some of the muddle in which they had found themselves as a result of the growth they had experienced over several years.

I met with Evan on a couple of occasions following from this, and learned more of his story.  I learned of the small firm, Sound Reasoning, that had been involved with Evan since the early days of the company and were no-nonsense coaches.

Based on what Evan told us of their successes with his firm, we opted to give Sound Reasoning a try – calling them in as one of several external resources during the Autopsy 2 process.

Stay tuned to this blog for more details about how much value we gain from Sound Reasoning!

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