This is the third installment of my MVP mini-series. The first part can be found here, and the second part here. Now that we’ve built the foundation, it’s time to start churning out product ideas. My goals are to complete enough of each idea to present either directly at our internal technology day, or to [...]

This is a graphic I did (I’m calling it a TriPi) to show how a technology practice (or any entity with three components and two metrics) can be quickly scored. In this case, it’s a measurement of the scope of knowledge in a technology practice (level of expertise), how up-to-date with regards to the technology [...]

This is the second part of a series discussing MVP and the technology we used to prove to ourselves that lightweight > heavyweight. The first part can be found here. The classic definition of MVP involves getting almost real-time market feedback on your ideas and letting that determine what your next step is. The increments [...]

This is the first part of a multi-part talk about a successful use of MVP to create a framework for proving and building products quickly. I’m a huge fan of lightweight. Lightweight tools, lightweight management, lightweight processes. Weed out the overhead by not even allowing it in to the system in the first place. Thus, [...]

Well, actually 06 as I spent two of them already.  If you follow me on Twitter (@wjklos) – you would have found out first.  Co-workers was 2nd priority.  Blog 3rd.  I may have to change that lineup a bit as my first response on Twitter was a spammer (sorry, no Wave for you) and the [...]

Over the next 10 years, the world will change as much as it has in the last twenty. If you buy into that statement, then 2020, will make 2010 look like 1990. As a business owner, that rate of change is something I probably can’t fathom too well. I’m focusing on my day-to-day operations (or maybe quarter-to-quarter in a public company). I’m dealing with annual budgets, reviews, sales quotas, economic issues, and so on. On top of all that, I probably don’t consider myself a technology company so I happily run my systems, make sure I’m compliant where I need to be, stay out of the newspaper RSS feeds with data security issues, and hope my BC/DR plans are up-to-date (they’re not). I didn’t see the end of my business coming — until it was too late.

Things are changing. Rapidly. The old solutions are just that…old. It’s time we start embracing the change and tell our clients, “Sorry, you used to be an insurance/medical/financial company, but now you are a technology company – and you’re doing it wrong.”

In an area where people are gathered, either physically or vitually, the conversations and comments being made in the background, are often more prescient, and almost certainly more entertaining than than the subject matter being officially presented. Encouraging and capturing these backchannel discussions is a way to make your presentations more relevant to that specific audience and allow the speaker to morph and refine the message based on those sessions of invaluable feedback.

Like everyone else it seems, after I saw the GoogleIO presentation of Wave this Summer, I navigated through all the links I could find trying to find a way to sign up. I mean, come on. I’m an early adopter of everything they put out for consumption, that’s gotta be worth a little consideration right? As [...]

The Execution phase of our Agile Data Center move is where all the fun stuff happens. As a reminder from the previous entries about the project setup and preparation, we’re doing a data center move where the schedule is flexible (the client is more tolerant of time, less tolerant of risk) and the requirements are [...]