The Organization Organizations, or most successful organizations, are not static.  To remain an ongoing concern the organization will need to adapt to identified opportunities.  This will require growing the talent base, either organically, that is from within, or by finding talent external to the organization.  From an external perspective, how do we know the right […]

  Career Change Recently we had a question come to us about how a person transition from one industry or a specific job title to another industry or another area of the company that requires different skills from what we presently have.  Perhaps as a way to avoid becoming stale, we may want to explore […]

Most of what we write is about technical, business, product development, and project management topics. I have no idea why I am writing this, or what to do with it when completed -if anything. Additionally, I am a little emotionally raw for reasons that will become apparent. Perhaps the writing will help me come to grips with this […]

The Olden Days by Jon M Quigley I recently had a phone call with a person I met on LinkedIn. Actually, I have been having calls with them over the weeks, to talk about product development, especially the way it was in the olden days.  Over the course of few discussions we began chatting about […]

By Jon M. Quigley I saw a LinkedIn post yesterday about the scope of testing during times of compressed schedule. The position was to test what is new in the software, and of that new, what is the most important, perhaps meaning what if it goes wrong, would be the worst for the client or […]

Brainstorming and Cost Improvement The brainstorming technique is attributed to Alex Faickney Osborne as explained in his 1953 book, Applied Imagination. The technique arose from frustration with the inability of employees to develop creative solutions for problems. Personal experience suggests this is a valuable tool when deployed appropriately and the guidelines are followed. If we […]

To really find the areas for cost improvement we must let go of our mental impediments to uncovering these opportunities. It is very probable that there are plenty of cost improvement possibilities. However, in our daily work execution we may not find the time to free our minds to consider these possibilities. A brainstorming exercise can go far to fuel the imagination, to open a “space” to think laterally at what may be possible. We have successfully employed this technique to:

Recently, I was in a conversation with a project manager whose organization had just made a radical alteration to their manner of handling work breakdown structure. There is a connection between the work breakdown structure and the financial tracking for the project. Ideally, there is an immediate connection between the WBS and the expenditures for […]

by: Shawn P. Quigley Whereas we have discussed some of the possible flaws in measurements we can all still agree that they are needed to provide both improvement in processes and the organization. However, other aspects of obtaining data for the production of quantifiable information: trend analysis and process evaluation, is the human factor both […]