Wednesday 7 May 2008

Scot's Newsletter Best Firewall Recommendation Made!

After 1.5 years (!!), Scot's Newsletter has reached a conclusion on the Best [Personal] Firewall Software ... (drum roll) ... (more drum roll) ... Online Armor! Read all about it in detail at Scot's Newsletter!

This blog entry by Scot makes for very interesting reading, not just from an interested-in-firewall-software point of view, but also I believe there are some other big concepts clearly "in play":
- the power of online marketing,
- the power of a respected industry leader,
- the influence a key client has over a product's development,
- the ability and agility with which the 2 final contenders were responding to user requests
- and in the future we'll have to see what happens to both companies!

For now, I am still on the previous version of Comodo as I really have not had the time or requirement to migrate, upgrade or change anything else on my home system.

Scrum and Organisational Patterns

Jeff Sutherland has posted an excellent short entry linking some sources together about how 33 Organisational Patterns of Agile Software Delivery that James Coplien and Neil Harrison formulated actually underlie Scrum. Read Jeff's post for further details: Agility and Organisational Patterns.

Thankyou for reading my blog!

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono

One of my most influential recent reads: Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono. His books have been recommended to me by various people since I was back in first year university. Writing this blog entry has also inspired me to check for his web site and find the Edward De Bono Portal which makes it easy to access other online resources related to him/his thinking creations.

amazon.co.uk



amazon.com




I read Six Thinking Hats directly after reading Lateral Thinking. Both are really excellent reads, but I discovered that I knew quite a bit about lateral thinking already having been exposed to that mode of thought through many people I know socially and have worked with over the years, in some respects it is a natural way for me to approach problems already. Whilst I highly recommend Six Thinking Hats, it contains many references to a number of thinking concerns, thus I believe you need to read at least one of his others, of which I believe none are better choice than Lateral Thinking.

amazon.co.uk



amazon.com





Why I recommend Six Thinking Hats:

Reason 1: Increase in productivity, both my own, and during team based activities such as meetings or workshops.
Reason 2: I, and many software industry people I have met, pretty much rely on a single very useful and relevant style of creating solutions for problems - namely extreme pragmatism. This works well, but is very limited for a future vision, and business people (aka clients) generally are more interested in the future and the environment created for their people.
Reason 3: Increased knowledge of how I think and how others think is invaluable as we are all knowledge workers - aka thinkers.

A smarter SMART for even better collaborative Objectives (including OKRs)

My favourite coaching tools: SMART Acronym Another Update