On Product Development and More...

It's Fall in the Bay Area. Which means - soccer season. My two kids play in our local AYSO region. And I love watching them play.

In the latest issue of CIO, Michael Friedenberg wrote an article (entitled "The Cost of Data Management") which discusses the challenges facing organizations given the explosion in information.

After being in the technology industry for over 20 years and having worked for a variety of companies both large (including Hewlett-Packard) and small (including several early-stage software startups), I decided to pursue my latest passion - going solo.

Today, I attended a webinar entitled: "An Agile Developer's Guide to Lean Software Development" hosted by Alan Shalloway, from NetObjectives. Shalloway is a noted expert in applying both Agile and Lean methods to Software Development.

Today, I attended a webinar entitled: "We Need it By October: What's Your Estimate?" hosted by Tim Lister, from the Atlantic Systems Guild. Lister is a noted expert in Risk Management, having written a book with Tom DeMarco entitled: "Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects".

As I wrote in a recent posting, Failure is Not an Option, the Standish Group recently published its latest CHAOS report identifying the factors driving success for IT projects (see article "CHAOS Summary 2009").

For those like me who have never worked in IT, it's a bit puzzling to see such high failure rates on projects. So what's going on here?

Philip Kotler, Robert C. Wolcott and Suj Chandrasekhar recently wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal on Product Development entitled "Playing Well With Others".

Marilyn Bier, the executive director at ARMA International, recently posted an article (entitled "Businesses Still Lag Best Practices in Information Management") that documents the results from ARMA's 2009 Record Management survey (of ARMA International members and information professionals).

Should software startups adopt a formal project management methodology?

This was the subject of a recent online discussion in LinkedIn’s Project Management Institute Group.

I recently attended a project management webinar sponsored by the International Institute for Learning as part of my effort to earn PDUs (aka Professional Development Units) to maintain my PMP (aka Project Management Professional) certification.

During the webinar, the instructor polled the audience about their challenges in managing projects. The participants – made up largely of certified IT Project Managers – cited a number of factors.

Today, I attended a webinar entitled: "Project Management Lessons Learned From The Movies" hosted by Tony Crawford, from AlphaPM. Crawford is a seasoned veteran with over 40 years of experience in virtually all areas of Information Technology including software project management.

Recently, I was talking to a friend who works for a large multinational. The conversation drifted towards Electronic Discovery and Information Management, two topics that I had been living and breathing for the past year.

I visited the doctor the other day. Since it had been more than 10 years since my last visit (he was a dermatologist; which means that part of me has been relatively healthy), I had to fill out the standard questionnaires that I fill out each time I visit a new doctor. Each time I do this, I recollect how inefficient the medical industry is. And how ready we are for a truly universal Electronic Health Record (EHR) System.

During the past year or so, I had worked at Abrevity on developing Information Management solutions. Among other things, our products enabled companies to better manage information containing sensitive data (be it credit card numbers, social security numbers, names, addresses, etc.). This has become even more critical due to the explosive growth of unstructured data.

Eric Osterhold authored a Blog Post entitled "Establishing classification types without going overboard". Eric states: "I’ve found that creating too many levels for classifying data defeats the process - users will not use a system with 6 or even 5 different classification levels. I often propose establishing 3 levels". He goes on to name "Restricted", "Sensitive" and "Public". Is this really enough?

Last weekend, I began doing my year-end housekeeping ritual. Organizing my file cabinets. Like many living in the hyper-expensive Bay Area, we have limited space. This means that all of my family’s records – taxes, investments, insurance (auto/home/life), automobile, house, credit card bills, utility bills, medical, school, warranty information, etc. – must fit in the three-drawer filing cabinet located in the closet of one of our bedrooms.