May 4th, 2009
Recently I facilitated a meeting of local officials here in Ann Arbor. They were members of the Local Development Finance Authority (LDFA) board, charged with oversight of the state funding to the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Smart Zone that spurs on high-tech business growth. This volunteer group operates openly as a local governing body, and [...]
October 9th, 2008
Lets talk about user stories. Writing and appropriately sizing user stories is one of the first and continuing challenges for organizations adopting an Agile methodology. While similar to requirements in characteristics, user stories require some special attention to get optimal results. Below is an example of a user story layout.
Keep these three steps in mind [...]
August 21st, 2008
You might ask, what does mobile computing have to do with project management? The answer is LOTS. Projects create and maintain a calendar of events. Keeping these synchronized with your other projects, business meetings, your personal tasks, and having them handy where ever you go is a very good thing for your sanity and [...]
June 27th, 2008
Recently my oldest son graduated from High School with all the accompanying graduation parties and preparations that goes along with it. Now, for anyone who has gone through this, you may recall how involved all the activities were. Add to this running a business and trying to keep your own sanity, and you may find [...]
May 27th, 2008
I’ve been wearing my pedometer for longer than I’ve been actively tracking the steps. However, for the past month I have been logging my steps as part of the Commuter Challenge Walk Around Ann Arbor through WalkerTracker. Prior to logging my steps I would walk about 2,200 steps a day. Which is what caused me [...]
March 21st, 2008
I recently completed work with a client that was struggling with their move to Agile practices. They were transitioning from a traditional waterfall process to an Agile process for all their IT projects and were experiencing some difficulties in writing, estimating and planning with Story Cards.
Their most obvious issue was that their Story [...]
January 31st, 2008
During the annual work holiday party at our house this weekend (yes we know it’s well past the holidays) I experienced some awesome and unconventional team building. My teenage sons ran out and purchased Rock Band for our Xbox 360 system and set it up during the party. Suddenly we had 4 people of varying [...]
January 3rd, 2008
Just finished the 1,000 page novel by Ken Follett, World Without End. Set in mid-to late-1300’s England, it traces the lives of 5 individuals from childhood to old age. Facing adversity, apathy, hunger, torture, abuse, and worst of all, the bubonic plague, Ken Follett brings the past to life in a very realistic format.
Through [...]
November 2nd, 2007
A nifty map viewer located at: http://muti.co.za/static/newsmap.html displays news on the region of the map selected. Find news from around the world by point and click. Of particular note is that the map opens to Africa! Nice to have a different world view than the usual European/American center of the universe thing!
The world gets [...]
