Doug's Blog Archives – Page 54 of 58

27 Aug 2008

While America Aged

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:37:14-06:00August 27th, 2008|Categories: Books and Courses, Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

The three stories told in the book (“While America Aged” by Roger Lowenstein) reminds me of the classic tales of a man selling his soul to the devil in return for riches and power. When the devil returns after the contract period to collect his “new” soul, the man desperately tries to avoid the fate he agreed to.

The first story is about General Motors (GM). As the unions became more powerful and smart, they demanded “future” benefits instead of large immediate pay increases. These future benefits included pension plans, health plans and retiree health plans. GM was always desperate to […]

22 Aug 2008

Aligning Your Focus with Your Vision

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:37:20-06:00August 22nd, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

What are you trying to accomplish with your business?

Making money is every business’s objective so that doesn’t count.

What are you creating that will create value for others such that they are willing to give you money? How are you going to make a difference in the world, or at least a part of it? What is your vision? What are your short and long-term goals to achieve that vision?

Everything that you do that does not take you closer to your vision is a distraction.

Don’t try to fluff up a distraction to look like you are achieving your goals […]

21 Aug 2008

Transitioning Between Iterations

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:37:37-06:00August 21st, 2008|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

I’ve noticed one mistake that is easy to get into with agile project management and that is to not properly close off one iteration and then to seamlessly start the next iteration.

The biggest problems with this are:

This gives the illusion that a project is just one giant iteration with work broken into a sequence of steps,
There is no sense of completion or accomplishment along the way,
Code is left in an unstable state longer and the customer does not see as much value,
There is little to no effort going into re-evaluating priorities and involving the customer in decisions,
There is little […]

11 Aug 2008

Bite-Sized Iterations

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:37:44-06:00August 11th, 2008|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

Time and time again the wisdom of having a good release and iteration planning methodology comes to the forefront. This becomes incredibly important on a large complex project or one where the sky is the limit on what the project could cover (i.e. client is coming up with new ideas daily).

The reasons are simple:

Focus, and
Reduced complexity over the short-term.

Worrying about the design of the entire application up front is time consuming, likely to become dated and most significantly contributes to lack of focus and stress for a development team… where do you begin?

The solution is conceptually simple but […]

5 Aug 2008

Raising the Retirement Age

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:38:08-06:00August 5th, 2008|Categories: Doug's Blog|

I read an article a little while back that Cuba was planning to raise the retirement age for workers by 5 years to try to cope with an aging population (60 to 65 for men and 55 to 60 for women). Cuba estimates that 25 percent of its population will be over 60 in the year 2025. Government leaders are also studying ways to increase the birth rate.

If the rules of the game suddenly changed, how would it impact your business? Better yet, how can your business change the rules (not break the law) so that you are playing a […]

30 Jul 2008

The Art of Procrastination

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:38:14-06:00July 30th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

As they say, "to err is human". To procrastinate is definitely a human error condition.

Yes, I am human. In fact, that is why I am writing this post, I just had a recent incident caused by waiting too long and then running into problem. I lucked in and had a really good experience with a very helpful service desk. It doesn’t always work out like that.

It’s interesting that about 40% of our PenForms (an application we built) users were completing their annual returns to the government in the last week (or later in some cases), even though they […]

25 Jul 2008

Fortune Telling

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:38:20-06:00July 25th, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

A week ago I read a forecast saying oil is heading to $200 per barrel this year. Today I read a forecast saying that oil is heading below $100 per barrel this year.

Reality… the only thing guaranteed about the future is we don’t really know what it holds. The past is easy and hindsight is 20/20.

So make sure your business vision and model support both up and down markets. I predict lots of both in the future.

23 Jul 2008

King (or Queen) of the Mess

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:38:25-06:00July 23rd, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

The other day I watched a program on TV where they took a look at people who were extremely “messy”. The people they interviewed were the opposite of everything the Martha Stewart brand stands for. Picture rooms stacked to the ceiling with vast accumulations of “stuff“. In some cases the rooms were so jammed you could barely move around. One guy had four apartments just like it in different cities.

Some made the argument that the time others spend cleaning and tidying they spend on being productive or creative. Others claimed they were highly visual people and needed to “see” […]

22 Jul 2008

Who’s In Control?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:38:30-06:00July 22nd, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

In business, you have to realize you cannot control everything. You cannot control your employees, suppliers or customers for example. All you can do is put the culture, systems and processes in place to attempt to guide things to your chosen destination.

Most businesses are actually organized chaos. Lots of things going wrong all the time but somehow things generally work out in the end. There is a point of diminishing return for effort invested in perfection (reducing problems to zero). Ideally the system is built to deal with the things that derail and then to get things back on […]

21 Jul 2008

Who’s The Boss (Anyways)?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T13:22:08-06:00July 21st, 2008|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

Tired of having a boss? Quit and start your own business, right?

Sounds great! No one to answer to but yourself. Call you own shots. Master of your destiny. Top dog. Ah, life will be great….

Unfortunately, being your own boss is a not a good reason to go into business, especially if it’s the main or only reason. It’s an especially bad idea if you can’t work for someone else (anti-social, argumentative, can’t take criticism, etc.) because you need those skills in business.

Assuming that: you are actually trying build a business; you are ethical; and “you” are filling the top […]

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