All Entries Tagged With: "Productivity"

Meeting Agenda as Catalyst?

What are leading reasons for unproductive review sessions of project deliverables? One comes quickly to mind for me – how about when 90% of your invitees show up without having even glanced at the materials in advance. For one thing, holding a meeting in this environment is not only incredibly inefficient, but it is also [...]

Planning a Successful Review Meeting, Part I

Holding requirement specification reviews is an activity that is critical to ensuring the quality of your deliverables. Review meetings aren’t typically “fun”, but they can be run smoothly and efficiently. They can also be excruciating if the the organizer and/or the attendees are not sufficiently prepared ahead of time. I plan to post a few [...]

Design for Use and Reuse

One way IT factories can really hurt themselves and their companies is by underemphasizing, or not considering at all the notion that systems and components should be designed with “reuse” in mind.

What is reuse, or the Reuse Model?

More Analysis Paralysis

Breaking out of analysis paralysis doesn’t require you to lower your standards, or to aim lower than you would otherwise. It just requires some prioritization. What you have to do is identify those things you have to get right from the get-go, those items that do need analysis, and what can be fixed later.

The 6 “Be’s” of Meeting Etiquette

A meeting can be very productive. A meeting can be a veritable nightmare. A lot depends on the professionalism of the participants.

I’ve devised a list that I think provides a broad but helpful guide that, if followed by meeting attendees, will result in a quality meeting where objectives can be met, and the tearing out of hair by its roots by participants can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.

The Cornell Method of Note-taking

Ok, so a lot of folks nowadays will type their meeting notes directly into their laptops, and that’s not a bad thing. It certainly saves time. However, there are situations where the old pen and paper is not a bad thing. I, for example, am still a traditional pen-and-paper note taker. Much like in college, [...]