Last year, I wrote about a fascinating article by the New York Times business writer Joe Nocera.1 In the piece, Nocera interviewed Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University and author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highl

Last year, I wrote about a fascinating article by the New York Times business writer Joe Nocera.1 In the piece, Nocera interviewed Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University and author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highl

Formula One racing, dominated by Mercedes and Ferrari, has had a curious relationship with the consumer market. Technology pioneered in Formula One (F1), such as paddle shifters, finds its way into conventional cars. Some consumer technology innovations find their way into the pro circuits. The two feed off each other.

Formula One racing, dominated by Mercedes and Ferrari, has had a curious relationship with the consumer market. Technology pioneered in Formula One (F1), such as paddle shifters, finds its way into conventional cars. Some consumer technology innovations find their way into the pro circuits. The two feed off each other.

I’ve never really liked the word empowerment, it’s just an acronym for delegation. The dictionary defines delegation as—authorizing subordinates to make certain decisions, and  empowerment as—give or delegate power or authority. Many people, myself included, have used the word empowerment to mean something more than delegation, but that extra meaning has been fuzzy. Empowerment has been used in conjunction with self-organizing teams, but often been carried too far, as trying to delegate far more authority to agile teams than was prudent.

Anyone attuned to the current political debates knows that much of the discussion is rooted not in the merits of either sides' positions, but in both sides' contentions that a failure to act will lead to damaging (if not damning) outcomes.

Anyone attuned to the current political debates knows that much of the discussion is rooted not in the merits of either sides' positions, but in both sides' contentions that a failure to act will lead to damaging (if not damning) outcomes.

If your enterprise is like most others, you probably have some trusted old systems that have served well but have become problematic for one reason or another. Perhaps the platform is no longer supported, or growth and add-ons have evolved into an expensive and difficult-to-maintain application mess.

This is the second Executive Update in a three-part series exploring how organizations can use intermediaries to better engage in a particular (and somewhat peculiar) kind of open innovation -- solving problems by leveraging large, anonymous populations of potential innovators, an approach commonly known as crowdsourcing.

This is the second Executive Update in a three-part series exploring how organizations can use intermediaries to better engage in a particular (and somewhat peculiar) kind of open innovation -- solving problems by leveraging large, anonymous populations of potential innovators, an approach commonly known as crowdsourcing.

As the level of consciousness enhances, it will no longer be the survival of the fittest, but the survival of the wisest.

-- J.M. Sampath, 2000

Have you suffered personal turmoil in applying conventional project management approaches only to fall short of expectations more often than you would like? Do you suspect that having successful projects under your belt is not quite enough to be a top-performing project manager? What more is required of today's project managers to evolve to the next level in a new decade?

For those of us who love and work with technology, it can be very difficult to relate one-to-one beyond the superficials, because doing so makes us emotionally vulnerable. However, that level of authenticity is required if leaders are to influence and persuade others to agree with and implement their ideas and visions for results. This is particularly true when the leader is less knowledgeable than the followers doing the project tasks.

For those of us who love and work with technology, it can be very difficult to relate one-to-one beyond the superficials, because doing so makes us emotionally vulnerable. However, that level of authenticity is required if leaders are to influence and persuade others to agree with and implement their ideas and visions for results. This is particularly true when the leader is less knowledgeable than the followers doing the project tasks.

Complex event processing (CEP) and stream-computing analytics software designed to analyze high volumes of continuously streaming data -- both structured and unstructured, in real time -- has received a fair amount of attention over the past 12 months or so.

When you make a new thing using a collaborative iteration process, you encounter the question of closure at each iteration. And, of course, you have to decide when you've got what you need or what they want, and make a choice when to quit altogether.

When you make a new thing using a collaborative iteration process, you encounter the question of closure at each iteration. And, of course, you have to decide when you've got what you need or what they want, and make a choice when to quit altogether.

"In agile there is no quality assurance." That is one of the major misconceptions about agile, expressed either with triumph or as an accusation, depending on the speaker's position. It doesn't matter which of these two parties you belong to; both points are wrong. In fact, the agile movement has led to a revival of quality culture in software development.

Social media represents an incredibly important opportunity to leverage existing technology onto internal and external strategic and operational business objectives of all shapes and sizes. Who, for example, would have suspected that new product lifecycles could be affected by wikis, blogs, file sharing, and opinions?

Social media represents an incredibly important opportunity to leverage existing technology onto internal and external strategic and operational business objectives of all shapes and sizes. Who, for example, would have suspected that new product lifecycles could be affected by wikis, blogs, file sharing, and opinions?

As the world of technology continues to change, no software company can rest. To expand their products, firms purchase others. Not only will they expand their product set through such purchases, but they can now cross-sell -- to the customers of both companies. This opens new opportunities for the software vendor. But while it is great for the vendor, it creates new challenges for the customer.

In this Executive Update, I provide some insights toward applying the lean concept of limiting work in progress (WIP) in Kanban to balancing WIP at the product management level.

"Nine outsourcing contracts. Do we really have nine outsourcing contracts?" The news came as a shock and a real eye-opener. You could tell.

"Nine outsourcing contracts. Do we really have nine outsourcing contracts?" The news came as a shock and a real eye-opener. You could tell.

The seductive beauty of owning your own house is that you can put up a fence, plant your garden, and paint your deck the way you want to, not the way your neighbors want you to, unless you moved into one of those subdivisions that control all of that. Ownership is synonymous with individual control and is instinctually attractive.