Tag Archives: planning

Agile Budgeting

People spend massive amounts of time creating and maintaing home budgets.  Budgets are important, but an Agile approach will help save time.  There are two basic classes for budgets: mandatory and discretionary expenses.  Mandatory is anything that you have to … Continue reading

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Individual MBO for Engineers

There is plenty of information of what comprises a good goal (SMART).  However, creating good goals for creative roles is something I’ve always struggled with.  I’ve broken the goals down into 4 main categories. Professional Development Present one topic for … Continue reading

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Negotiating with Contingency Recruiters

Recruiters can provide a great value to the organization if you use the right ones and have good contract terms.  Here are some of the must-have items I include in my contracts: Fee – This is a percentage of the … Continue reading

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The 3-Hour Work Day

I just got finished with The 4-Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.  The basic premise of the book is to cut the interruptions out of you day-to-day job (allowing you to work less), work from home (allowing you to work … Continue reading

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Cost-To-Serve

Having an accurate cost-to-serve (CTS) metric is a critical part of running a website.  This should be used as the overall mesure of how efficiently customers can be served.  The technology team should have goals to continually lower that CTS … Continue reading

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Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE)

I just finished reading Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. This is another great book I will add to my management toolkit. The book is a case study of a multi-year project … Continue reading

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Organizing My Thoughts

I recently starting using ConceptDraw MINDMAP for organizing my thoughts, subject notes, and planning. The product works on the MAC (for me) and Windows (for others). I always knew mind mapping tools were out there, but I never fully appreciated … Continue reading

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