The Air Force has revoked more than 226 Air Force instructions deemed unnecessary or outdated over the past year as part of its ongoing effort to get rid of so-called “queep.” In an interview at her Pentagon office Tuesday, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said...
Continue reading »
October 4, 2018 Bruce Benson
Process Improvement
No Comment
What had worked for us? Velocity or better stated the methodology behind velocity, the average. It always drove people crazy that I'd advocate averages or I'd simply use averages on my projects.
Continue reading »
September 28, 2018 Bruce Benson
Metrics
No Comment
It was a scrum. No, not the agile software method, but a bunch of people all racing after the current big defect found in the product. It was a badge of merit to be the first to figure out the defect and to report on its fix. My boss expected me to jump into this competition of egos when these problems happened.
Continue reading »
September 19, 2018 Bruce Benson
Team Management
No Comment
“I had two whiteboards filled up with questions left unanswered, tests left undone, and every other question we could think of,” Amber wrote on her Facebook page that day. Amber says that at one point during that meeting, she told the staff she felt like...
Continue reading »
September 13, 2018 Bruce Benson
Risk Management
No Comment
Many of you are familiar with the “technology adoption life cycle” model, long a pillar of everything from new tech product pitches to IPO roadshows. However, overuse has eroded the model’s impact. Today, it’s less an effective visualization of market traction, and more a symbol...
Continue reading »
August 29, 2018 Bruce Benson
Change Management
No Comment
I would have thought that a direct marketer who can’t make a high-teens annualized return over the longer term look very attractive wouldn’t be a very good marketer. The truth should suffice. Evidently, we’re in a world where the truth doesn’t always suffice. In one...
Continue reading »
August 25, 2018 Bruce Benson
Communication
No Comment
Instead of officially lowering its prices, Apple is in talks with retailers and banks to offer holiday deals all year round, according to people familiar with the plans. Those people say Apple is also asking some individual stores to more than quadruple sales targets, to...
Continue reading »
August 17, 2018 Bruce Benson
Communication
No Comment
I've found that "having the data" is about half the effort. The other half is not how to make it compelling. The data was always compelling in my experience because it generally showed that we were making poor decisions. That rarely went over well.
Continue reading »
August 11, 2018 Bruce Benson
Metrics
No Comment
Although it is a user’s responsibility to inform themselves of a browser’s features by actually reading the disclosures, the authors assert that these texts need to be written better. They note that only “participants who saw the Chrome or [older version of the] Chrome disclosure...
Continue reading »
August 8, 2018 Bruce Benson
Communication
No Comment
Employees viewed Fadell — who’s known as the godfather of the iPod and played a key role in designing the iPhone — as a product visionary and leader. Fawaz, by contrast, was considered a business development manager, focused on efficiencies. … Another said he believes...
Continue reading »
July 23, 2018 Bruce Benson
Schedule
No Comment
At 6 am, analytical thinking was shown to peak. However, in the evenings and nights this thinking style changed to a more emotional and existential one.
Continue reading »
July 18, 2018 Bruce Benson
Staffing
No Comment
The advent of the fiduciary rule led the industry to make changes that may not be reversed, according to Aron Szapiro, Morningstar Inc.’s director for policy research. After the Labor Department’s announcement in 2016, financial companies began moving to comply with it. Bank of America...
Continue reading »
July 10, 2018 Bruce Benson
Change Management
No Comment
Today’s workers don’t need some Big Brother figure hovering over us to tell us that budgets are cut, that we will be in big trouble if we don’t meet deadlines, and to “make do with less.” We need leaders who set us up for success,...
Continue reading »
July 4, 2018 Bruce Benson
Staffing
No Comment
The bug-laden software resulted in fix after fix, each fix reconciling some problems but introducing new ones. This all produced an enormous revenue source from the selling of Systems Engineer’s services.
Continue reading »
June 28, 2018 Bruce Benson
Innovation
No Comment
Yet Abt, on behalf of Carthage College, in Kenosha, Wis., has returns that beat Harvard ’s $37 billion endowment and most others. In the 10 years through the most recent college fiscal year, ended on June 30, 2017, the former beer company executive racked up...
Continue reading »
June 23, 2018 Bruce Benson
Process Improvement
No Comment