Business
Implementing agile development
“Agile development” is used to describe a wide variety of development practices. Claiming that one follows an “agile” development methodology is easy. But declaring that your practices are “agile” is just about as useful as declaring yourself the winner – saying you are the winner doesn’t make it so. Thus the question is, how... »
I’m special – no you’re not!
People have an interesting tendency to believe that best practices do not apply to them. In this post I discuss the “I’m special so I should write my own web framework” case. Take for instance: Writing a CV. Best practice states that shorter is better, but oh so many people still want to have an eight-page... »
Picking the right nonfiction book
When it comes to reading, I’m spoiled! I notice I am getting more and more picky when it comes to ordering books from Amazon, which makes finding books that seem worth reading much harder to find. Over the years I’ve read quite a pile of books particularly related to programming, general business, entrepreneurship and software... »
A few thoughts on evaluating startup ideas
I’ve spent a reasonably amount of time looking at the various blogs writing about how to evaluate entrepreneurial ideas. Market size, first mover advantage and the idea of a hot or trendy business model are often mentioned as key factors, but I would argue that their impact is not quite as straightforward as some... »
How projects fail
I think the most amazing thing about spectacular project failures is that they happen one day at a time. How do you get 170 million USD over budget? One day at a time. Given the size of many of the largest failures (hundreds of staff members), there have had to be a number of people... »
What is wrong with “subjective”?
Here is pet peeve of mine: why is calling something “subjective” an acceptable way of not answering a question? In particular, with technical people, “subjective” seems to mean “not worth answering, because there is no correct answer”. “Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this... »
Pre-planning: do it, and do it right
All people consistently short-change the future in order to get present gains (or some people, sometimes – doesn’t matter). I don’t mean the kind of monetary things, where you will eat one candy today rather than a bag tomorrow – I mean in terms of time. What you don’t do in the beginning will... »
Expertise and learning goals
Given that I have spent some time studying expertise from an academic perspective, I figure it would be good to summarize some of the things we know about experts and the process of developing expertise. Keep in mind that academic studies will rarely give you the simple answer – there is none. But what... »
9+ great books on entrepreneurship and management
If you happen to know me, then you might be able to borrow these books from me, I am quite sure I have all these in my bookshelf – since they aren’t generally found in Finnish libraries and I prefer to own my books. Entrepreneurship Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. A great book on technology... »
Different ways of looking at a project
The terms “business owner mentality” and “employee mentality”, or, as I prefer, “project owner mentality” and “project worker mentality” are commonly used to describe the difference between effective workers and effective managers. These two mentalities come up in almost any human endeavor of appreciable complexity, and I think it is worth recognizing the difference... »