management

Career Survival Skills for Gearheads

The Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP) research team is fond of gearheads. You know, the technical professionals who get things done within organizations, the ones who find the answers. For the past 5 years the Professional Effectiveness team has been doing gearheads…

IT Jobs – Misplaced Value?

This morning I was discussing an article from CIO.com by Patrick Thibodeau with my colleague Jack Santos. The article “IT Job Seekers Face Hot Yet Terrible Market” discusses how the IT job market is both hot and not, mentions effects from expectation…

Measure What Really Matters

I ran across a very interesting op-ed by Tim Jackson on productivity today in the New York Times. The gist of his well-articulated argument is that due to our relentless drive for increased output, certain professions and their attendant tasks become negatively…

Measure What Really Matters

I ran across a very interesting op-ed by Tim Jackson on productivity today in the New York Times. The gist of his well-articulated argument is that due to our relentless drive for increased output, certain professions and their attendant tasks become negatively…

IT job postings ask for the wrong thing

My report “Job Postings – Hiring for IT’s Past” published today on Gartner.com. This Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP) report is a wake-up call for IT organizations because it shows that most IT organizations are hiring for the wrong requirements. In late…

We Need More Demos

TED is an unbelievable place to step back from the day-to-day and dream big.  As I described in my first TED 2012 post this week, this place puts me in a great frame of mind to find meaning in just about any…

Task Switching Costs

Happy Leap Day 2012!  Scott Ambler (@scottwambler) tweeted about task switching costs and resource management.  Here are Scott’s tweets: Many “resource managers” will assign someone to several teams to ensure they are fully utilitized. 1/2 When people are assigned to multiple teams…

Useful Eponymous Laws and Anti Pattern Avoidance

One of my favourite eponymous laws is Greenspun’s tenth rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp Any self-respecting sceptic should memorise Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice…

Organisational Design Anti Pattern: Headcount Justifying the Manager

A feudalism Anti Pattern?   This Anti Pattern attracts controversy. It is potentially incendiary, and presents itself during analysis of business architecture, particularly organisational design and efficiency. Anti Pattern Name [Headcount Justifying the Manager.] Type: [Managerial, Organisational.] Problem: [Organisational Structure may have…
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