Asymptomatic

Posts tagged: work

Notetaking For Business
September 29, 2024
notes business work

I have seen endless books and blogs and forum posts espousing the use of specific note-taking techniques that are meant to give a leg up to anyone who takes notes as part of their daily life. I am bothered that most of these techniques assume a certain disposition of note-taker – You are either a student taking notes for topics in class that you will later be tested on, or you are a “researcher” of some kind taking notes to help you think through complex topics for deeper meaning.

In the former case, students have a variety of note-taking tools that have lasted for what seems like millennia. Cornell Notes, a system designed in the 1950’s, is a note-taking strategy that allows students to quiz themselves on details they take notes on, which is generally regarded as a good practice for study. Sadly, there are many studies that report the general achievement of Cornell Notes takers isn’t statistically better than other students.

Traction Touchbase
June 30, 2021
agile development work management standup scrum

I’ve been reading many posts on Reddit about “daily scrum” meetings, and I’ve got to say, there are some really strange practices out there. I don’t understand how people are ending up with the processes they do. I wanted to write down a few basics to get them out of my head and be able to share them with others, so I’m drafting this post. This post will be about the team daily touchbase meeting format that I’ve been using for the last three years, known in for-fee framework circles as “the daily scrum” and also as “daily standup”.

People seem to talk a bunch about “big-A Agile”. I don’t know that I like labels too much. I am working more from base principles here than from a Scrum foundations textbook or the Agile Manifesto. But it does seem reasonable to review some Agile basics.

Roadmaps
May 05, 2020
work roadmap plan

I’ve been thinking about how to plan not just a large development project, but multiple large development projects together on a timeline and allow for interrupt work.

We’ve managed to put together a roadmap for the next fiscal year. It looks nice, and it conveys useful information for our plan for the year. But it has some flaws, and I’ve been mentally taking a step back to try to understand the purpose of having a roadmap, and what useful results it feeds.

Productivity In Captivity
April 21, 2020
work productivity plan

One thing we’re learning as we stay home during C19 is that “if we only had the time” isn’t real. I think it’s one of the unexpected more depressing aspects of this whole situation.

When provided with the “opportunity” of “spare time” to work on those things that we’ve always wanted to get done, we’re not actually doing any more of them than we ever did. Having no place to be on Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday evenings like we usually would doesn’t re-open those evenings for other productive activities.