Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

For those of you that have read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, the terms MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and pivot will be all too familiar. The idea behind a MVP is that you create something quickly that validates your hypotheses behind the product that you are developing. If you are like me and have worked in large organizations, the idea of a MVP is terminology repeated but never digested. You either build Frankenstein or you don't. By the time your Frankenstein of a product is developed and deployed, it's NOTHING like what you envisioned.  You are just happy that you got it to work.  The other term, pivot, refers to the point where you realize that it's time to change direction and do something different. Here are a number of examples of famous pivots .  All of which make sense because these companies went on to become success stories. Nobody remembers the companies that pivoted to their day of doom.  When you think pivot, think Andy Grove du...

All consultants have had them-- nightmare projects. Whether it's a client that doesn't want to work with you. A business problem that really isn't a problem. Or a project that is under resourced and over scoped from the beginning-- there are probably more nightmare projects than success stories that are out there. As one of my old bosses would say, "If the situation wasn't f*cked up, they wouldn't need our help."  What he didn't tell me was that we were the ones that f*cked it up in the first place. If you stay in consulting long enough, you will eventually have a project that will literally make you regret waking up in the morning.  When it happens, here are 5 tips to get you through it.  Remember that this too shall pass. Right now you're saying, "Go screw yourself! Really?!" When you're in it, it seems like it will never end. But the reality is that consulting, real consulting anyway, is about projects that are tempor...

It took the Titanic 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink.  For the people on the ship, that must have felt like an eternity.  All it took was for one hit to an iceberg to set off a series of events that would ultimately send the ship to its fate and make it one of the best analogies for major business and IT projects (and in some cases, our career) in our lifetime. How many of you feel like you are on a project that is headed towards the bottom of the ocean?  When you work for a big firm, there are so many risk avoidance protocols in place, that you may feel like you are on The Titanic. In reality, the risk of failure is low. When you work for a small company that cares about revenue over risk, your odds increase exponentially. And instead of being on The Titanic, you may actually be piloting the Hindenburg.  Here are few signs that you are on a project disaster that can only be caused by other humans around you.  Every risk matrix for the project has a...

Bob Ross - You know who he is One of the biggest things lacking in enterprise software development is creativity.  I'm not talking about creativity during implementation. If there is one thing that all successful IT managers are good at, it's getting creative at getting their project plans executed in corporate bureaucracy.  I am talking about creativity in design and end user usability.  Since when did corporate IT become about compounding solutions that are good enough into solutions that are even more good enough? (And by good enough I mean that it simply works). What I've discovered in the last two years of IT project management is that IT departments in big companies have a mission to "keep the lights on."  Imagine you buy a new Honda Accord and your mission was to keep that thing running for as long as it can go. At some point, you'll upgrade it- but instead of upgrading to a Tesla, you'll upgrade it to another Honda Accord; maybe a few...