Category: Uncategorized

Blue Skies for Job Hoppers?

Looks like a smaller version of the glory days may be returning. Employers should take the time to carefully evaluate their salary and benefits packages before they lose key emloyees who tolerated their positions because the employers had the upper hand.

Despite the doom-and-gloom title to this post, I fully sympatize with what the FBI is trying to accomplish, and the very public pain that they will feel as a result of the failure of Virtual Case File 1.0.

What I find interesting is that the biggest technology company no one has ever heard of, SAIC, failed to deliver a product that met the client’s needs. They are noted for their cutting-edge development and technology, especially in skunkworks and black ops.

This project demonstrates that incredibly complex software projects can and will fail to deliver unless the needs of the users are carefully considered, and the project is not rushed for political purposes.

What is the goal of Virtual Case File? I hypothesize that it is to make the process of handling case documentation and correlation more effective and efficient, with the additional benefit of being able to link disparate bits of information into a more effective whole more quickly, saving lives, etc.

Ever line of code needs to be developed with this purpose in mind. Does this function allow a user to achieve the goals that have been defined for the entire project? If not, what do we need to do to improve this function?

It is very easy to lose sight of the corporate goal when working on atomic-level components of a larger project. Happens to me every day. That is why I sit back at the end of each day and consider how my efforts contributed to my strategic personal and professional goals. I have to do it, or else I get trapped by the minutiae.

I wish the FBI luck, as this project is a much-needed advance for law-enforcement.

Working on a White Paper with a colleague. WIll be posting very little today.

The team at Port80 Software has come up with a cool side-project: cool 404 pages.

The best: CLICK HERE. (May force you to download a file in Mozilla/Firefox)

I read this article, and although it applies to the Public Sector, it is completely true in the area of Web performance excellence.

The Takeaway Quote

“[T]he magical performance system doesn’t exist. Even a good performance system doesn’t exist. Systems don’t improve performance; leaders do.”

Robert Behn

Bloglines this…bloglines that. What’s the big deal?

Now I understand. I don’t have to worry about the feeds that I read anymore, and I can get them from anywhere! So much understanding flowing to me now!

Subscribing to Bloglines also forced me to clean out some of the detritus in my subscription list. I went nuts at the beginning, subscribing to everything with an RSS feed. Have to be a little more discriminating now.

A few posts ago, I made some statements which I may come to regret. However, as I wrote to the one person who commented on my statement, what I said was more of a back-handed challenge to Canadian employers to show me that they are truly innovative and world-busting.

I issue a challenge to Canadian Internet firms: Show me that you understand Web performance excellence, and are willing to take on a process to implement this concept from the CEO to the receptionist. I want to participate in this; I want to make a Canadian firm the example that the can be shown to the world as the leader.

It may be a niche area, but if you think about it, it means that a company has to understand how its Web property fits into or defines its business model from top to bottom. There are few companies in the world who can say that they understand this, especially not those who did not begin with an explicit ebusiness focus.

There may be firms that think that they have a handle in this. They key question is this: Do your business performance metrics talk to your Web performance metrics?

Let’s work together to make your business and technology speak the same language.

If anyone wants to buy me one of these, I will gladly start to use a Mac.

Matthew Homann of the [non-billable] hour has a link to a great read at Working Knowledge, a journal from the Harvard Business School. Titled Nail Customer Service, it reminds us that quantifying good customer service sometimes means stepping back and re-examining how you are trying to deliver it.

A good quick read with some great insights.

So far, YDS seems to be ok. A bit of hacking to get it to look into PST files (this should be a default!). However, I am re-building the indices (not indexes, please!) because the file search was having issues finding the string "doc". But my Outlook e-mail was all searchable (except for the PST files).

I will write more as I use it more.

YDS has a Fatal Flaw in my opinion — it does NOT search inside PST files. I believe that Copernic did.

Also, the searching interface is not real intuitive, and I am a non-linear thinker.

Off to get Copernic.