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Blog
Searching for Tom
Posted by Rich Crowley on Mar 5, 2011 in art | 0 comments
I attended the “Searching for Tom” exhibit this morning at The Museum in Kitchener with my daughter and one of her friends. I had been very excited about attending as I am a big Tom Thomson fan and similarly enjoy the work of some of his good buddies in the Group of Seven. My initial reaction was some degree of disappointment stemming largely from my expectations of a larger exhibition of his works. Perhaps this is typical of someone who isn’t a regular patron of the arts and who is not schooled in the finer curatorial...
read morePlaying With A Lead
Posted by Rich Crowley on Feb 10, 2011 in Project Management, teams | 0 comments
Early last month, the Canadian National Junior Hockey team lost the gold medal game 5-3 to Russia at the annual world junior championship tournament held in Buffalo. There was much anguish across the land not so much because they lost, but because they had it won and then gave it away. You see, the Canuck lads led 3-0 at the end of the second period. That’s a decent lead and it was a lead they had built up by playing very well to that point in the game. The Russians scored twice in a span of about 11 seconds early in the third and it...
read moreHow To Benefit From Running Projects You Know Nothing About
Posted by Rich Crowley on Jan 5, 2011 in Knowledge Transfer, Project Management | 0 comments
I have heard it suggested that PM’s really don’t need to know much about the essence of a project to manage it. Their role isn’t to be the expert (or anything close to one) but to simply plan and manage the project work towards its ultimate objectives and goals. I have a problem with this. I have been a PM for enough years to have learned that on projects where I knew very little about the guts of what needed to be accomplished, it was a whole lot more difficult for me to manage, and I was less able to add value, compared to projects...
read moreData Driven Projects
Posted by Rich Crowley on Nov 2, 2010 in common sense, Design, productivity, Risk, waterfall | 0 comments
From the dawn of programming time, one of the holy grails that programmers have chased is to avoid hard-coding data values into program code if at all possible. Since most significant applications use some form of database management system, software applications can be developed that are extremely flexible because their behaviour can be changed by manipulating the underlying data, rather than program code. Over the past ten years, I have worked on a ton of projects where application changes requested by business stakeholders involved nothing...
read morethe Babe Meets the President
Posted by Rich Crowley on Aug 5, 2010 in great quotes | 0 comments
On a steamy day in Washington in the 1920’s, Babe Ruth was introduced to the President. His greeting? “Hot as hell, ain’t it Prez?”. Beautiful. Interestingly, there is much confusion within that oracle known as google as to who the president was that day. Many sources contend it was Calvin Coolidge, while others suggest Warren Harding. Either way, the Babe’s quote stands as a great one.
read moreNumeracy Skills are Undervalued
Posted by Rich Crowley on Aug 5, 2010 in common sense, Personal Improvement, thinking | 0 comments
I believe that the most important attribute for any business person to possess is great communication skills. However, this is followed closely by numeracy skills. Numeracy is defined as “the ability to use numbers, especially in arithmetical operations”. Communication and numeracy skills are very different in that there is a very broad range of communications skills but with numeracy, it has been my experience that you are either strong in this area or you aren’t. Here’s an example. You are a manager of a customer service area....
read moreBill Walsh and Projects
Posted by Rich Crowley on Apr 6, 2010 in innovation, Project Management | 0 comments
I’m a big fan of many sports. I don’t watch them on TV as much as I used to but I love big sports events, whether they be team events like the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup play-offs, or major tournaments like the Masters, Wimbledon, etc. The people involved in sports at the highest level are a constant source of interest to me. While there have been many personalities who have changed the game they were involved with, one of my favourites is Bill Walsh. Bill Walsh came to fame as head coach of the San Francisco 49’ers...
read moreAgile and Common Sense
Posted by Rich Crowley on Dec 2, 2009 in Agile, common sense | 0 comments
Agile is hard. Agile is mistaken for a silver bullet. This is a great blog post. There is a fair degree of common sense in both these statements. I love common sense. I love it even more when it gets applied to the process of software development in companies. As a PM who made his PM bones using predominantly (but not exclusively) PMBOK-based methodologies, Agile-based approaches worry me only in that they appear to be driven more as a reaction to negative experiences with existing software development approaches than based on a solid...
read moreThe Struggle
Posted by Rich Crowley on Sep 22, 2009 in literature, struggle | 0 comments
“It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his own invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work is not only convenient but unavoidable.” Tennessee Williams, the American playwright, wrote this in a piece entitled A Streetcar Named Success, published in the New York Times on Nov. 30, 1947 four days before the New York opening of A...
read moreLean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
Posted by Rich Crowley on Jul 16, 2009 in Agile, books, Lean, Project Management | 0 comments
This book was written by a husband and wife team who have extensive experience in software development as well as a host of other industries that have been touched by the lean movement. It is an excellent read. The authors are not shy about expressing their disappointment in how strong the Project Management Institute’s influence has grown over how software development projects are planned and managed. The book outlines 7 principles derived from lean methods. Among these are eliminate waste, and deliver as fast as possible. Within these...
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