Curt Doolittle

Category: Business, Organization, and Management

  • 1) Are we at capacity for the meeting in London, or do we need to recruit more p

    1) Are we at capacity for the meeting in London, or do we need to recruit more people?

    2) Can we get a notice put on the PFS Home Page? It turns out that we need this for Veronika’s visa.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-27 05:47:00 UTC

  • PERFECT WORK SCHEDULE EXPERIMENT 13 Month Business Calendar. 5 day work week + 2

    PERFECT WORK SCHEDULE EXPERIMENT

    13 Month Business Calendar.

    5 day work week + 2 day weekend.

    5 day work week + 2 day weekend.

    5 day work week + 2 day weekend. (release deliverable)

    2 day work week + 5 day weekend. (planning next)

    Holiday’s restart the cycle.

    Gotta try that some day. And track performance.

    Too hard to do unless you have something like Oversing.

    Now, the data says that ‘people’ are only productive about six hours a day. But that doesn’t really apply to the high performance fields. Plenty of us who specialize in thinking, can work ten or twelve hours productively. And, I know, that if I don’t have other real-life distractions, I’m pretty good for 14 hours a day for six weeks before I get tired.

    My favorite way to work, and I think this is true for most problem solvers, is to ‘sprint’. That means, to work very hard on a problem for up to three months, and then recover for a week or two. I’d actually rather work in sprints than I would at a constant pace.

    And I don’t think I’m alone in that. I just think most people don’t get the opportunity, and so they have to try all sorts of games to remain interested in what they’re doing, precisely because they don’t set goals, and ‘sprint’.

    One of the best reasons for sprinting, is that work doesn’t expand to fit available time, nor does work become diluted by a multitude of irrelevant but pleasantly distracting nonsense – like internal politics.

    (just a thought for the day)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-22 03:42:00 UTC

  • What Is The Best Kanban Board Software That Integrates With Sharepoint?

    Thanks for asking me to answer this question.

    Unfortunately I can’t do it comfortably, because all the products that I would classify as ‘good’ or ‘recommended’, are not on Sharepoint. The reason is architectural.   Although Sharepoint is an amazing and nearly universal product.   Sharepoint isn’t well designed for this problem and neither is Jira really, although at Atlassian they do an amazing job of it.

    This space is our industry, and we know if fairly well, and the best tool we can find for pure (analytical) devs is TargetProcess. It’s very powerful and nerdy. The best tool for production support, and the industry standard is Jira. Jira is simple and usable if you can tolerate the rather terrible navigation. There are a half dozen others that are extremely good.  But these are our top two choices, and they’re the one’s we recommend if our product Oversing would be overkill.

    Our product is probably the most powerful solution by a couple orders of magnitude, but it’s for running an entire services business and making money at it, and so it’s not just a dev tool, and it’s not on Sharepoint.


    Check out these links
    Which is the best agile software project management tool?

    And this product
    SharePoint & TFS

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-Kanban-board-software-that-integrates-with-SharePoint

  • What Is The Best Kanban Board Software That Integrates With Sharepoint?

    Thanks for asking me to answer this question.

    Unfortunately I can’t do it comfortably, because all the products that I would classify as ‘good’ or ‘recommended’, are not on Sharepoint. The reason is architectural.   Although Sharepoint is an amazing and nearly universal product.   Sharepoint isn’t well designed for this problem and neither is Jira really, although at Atlassian they do an amazing job of it.

    This space is our industry, and we know if fairly well, and the best tool we can find for pure (analytical) devs is TargetProcess. It’s very powerful and nerdy. The best tool for production support, and the industry standard is Jira. Jira is simple and usable if you can tolerate the rather terrible navigation. There are a half dozen others that are extremely good.  But these are our top two choices, and they’re the one’s we recommend if our product Oversing would be overkill.

    Our product is probably the most powerful solution by a couple orders of magnitude, but it’s for running an entire services business and making money at it, and so it’s not just a dev tool, and it’s not on Sharepoint.


    Check out these links
    Which is the best agile software project management tool?

    And this product
    SharePoint & TFS

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-Kanban-board-software-that-integrates-with-SharePoint

  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP: PAIN TOLERANCE I’ve said this before, but it seems to me that

    ENTREPRENEURSHIP: PAIN TOLERANCE

    I’ve said this before, but it seems to me that the difference between entrepreneurs and other people, is largely (a) pain tolerance (b) extraordinary competitiveness and (c) unhealthy confidence bordering on ruthlessness.

    I mean, I’m burning through a tremendous amount of money building Oversing. It HURTS just to think about it. It hurts largely because of how hard I had to work to make that money.

    But the flip side is that I can control it, and make it what I want it to be, without compromise. And If I’m reasonably successful, my return on investment will be about 100x or so.

    Entrepreneurship isn’t for the weak or the timid. That’s for sure.

    Edison said mentioned Inspiration and Perspiration but somehow he forgot to mention risk and pain tolerance, myopic and obsessive dichotomous thinking, and the desire and ability to sell ideas. ‘Cause selling is what it takes to do almost anything.

    “SCHUMPETERIAN THINKING” : the love of creative destruction.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-09 15:12:00 UTC

  • (Sketch) Eliminate the state sponsored corporation. A corporation is a partnersh

    (Sketch)

    Eliminate the state sponsored corporation.

    A corporation is a partnership whose members are insured by a monopoly insurer insulated from competition: the state.

    All associations are, and only can be, partnerships.

    Restore right of suit for any and all involuntary transfers, outside of morally sanctioned competition, against any and all individuals within the partnership and their agents.

    Require insurance bonds be purchased by the partnership.

    Require all employees be bonded if they communicate with or act on behalf of, customers.

    (The incentives will favor truth telling and allocate money and status to truth-tellers.)

    Stock certificates shall not represent ownership, but a purchase of contractual rights to dividends that are guaranteed by the assets in the event of liquidation or sale. Control then shall not be democratic, but contractual.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-07 09:26:00 UTC

  • One of our Billable / Non-Billable Time Entry Controls. Opens with 15 minutes. B

    One of our Billable / Non-Billable Time Entry Controls.

    Opens with 15 minutes. Because of 15minute minimum increments.

    Press the clock position from 1-12 and set it to that many hours.

    Press the +/- minutes to add or subtract 15 minutes at a time.

    Press the +/- hours to add or subtract an hour at a time.

    Press the TIME value to save the time.

    Starting the timer sets the time to 15 minutes.

    After 15 minutes have past, it adds another 15 minutes, and so on.

    C1 – CASE DATA ENTRY

    C1.1 Display a time entry field [ ___:____ ]. User selects the field. Time entry control is displayed (transparent background). Clock displays 15minutes. User taps + once, and value increases to 30 minutes, taps it a second time, value increases to 45 minutes. User taps time value, control closes, and entry field is set to 45 minutes: [ ___:45 ].

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-06 16:35:00 UTC

  • THE “BIG FIVE” WORKPLACE TRAITS IN CONSULTING People are not a commoditized “mea

    THE “BIG FIVE” WORKPLACE TRAITS IN CONSULTING

    People are not a commoditized “meat” that is reducible to P&L Numbers. It takes a variety of skills to produce excellent service work. And Oversing measures (at least) those five different properties:

    —TRAIT————————-Measurement———–

    1) “Like-ability” (Peer 360 system

    2) “Soft Skills – Trustworthiness” (Skill System by Peers)

    3) “Revenue value of hard skills” (Skill System / Peer Skill Ratings)

    4) “Customer Trust and Retention” (Net Promoter Score)

    5) “Profitability” measured as:

    a) Utilization and b) Chargeability (Standard financial metrics)

    So, any individual is always represented by oversing using all these ‘metrics’. Their “Personality Profile” so to speak.

    THE WORKPLACE AS EXTENDED FAMILY RATHER THAN LABOR POOL.

    We found that feedback from PEERS was MORE ACCURATE and MORE RESPECTED and produced GREATER BEHAVIORAL CHANGE than all feedback from management combined. In fact, management opinion of any staff member was usually a CONTRARY INDICATOR of the individual’s value to the business.

    So, our use of these measures helped us create a culture of a ‘family’ by giving honest feedback, the purpose of which was to ‘advance the individual and the family’ as a whole. Not through threats, not through incentives, not through pressure, but through advice and counsel. Humans want to do the right thing to fit into groups. And you just have to give them to tools to do so. Reliable information is the best tool.

    Like the original meaning of ‘confession’, almost all feedback is publicly visible. Your sins are public, as is your heroism.

    ONE OF THE SECRETS OF ANY BUSINESS IS NEED FOR EACH OTHER.

    One of the secrets is “IDLE HANDS MAKE ILL WILL”. And people will naturally free-ride and rent-seek, which creates animosity in the ‘tribe’. The best way to prevent bad behavior is by minimizing the potential of it. The best way to minimize potential, is to always be marginally short of staff, so that everyone has to chip in to keep everyone else successful and happy. Furthermore, the incentive to overstaff is usually crated by the most populous RENT SEEKERS in any business : middle management. Oversing reduces the ability of middle management to rent seek, hide information for the purpose of obtaining political power. Our experience was that we needed only talent leadership, not ‘management’ per se. Because the feedback and ‘management’ of individual behavior was democratized into a marketplace of voluntary exchanges of assistance, appreciation and complaint.

    Oversing is revolutionary if you use it as we intend that you do. It will transform not only your ability to manage your business by looking forward, and by increasing utilization but it will transform you business by making the ‘family’ manage the business, and thereby feeling PART OF IT, and able to INFLUENCE IT.

    Management hierarchy is, just like government, little more than rent seeking and obfuscation of facts.

    And just like government, management hierarchy is the primary reason why individuals feel resentment toward the business.

    Make them LOVE IT INSTEAD.

    IF TALENT IS YOUR BUSINESS, THEN USE IT, AND TAKE CARE OF IT.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-06 06:29:00 UTC

  • (humor)(office) “OMG Denis. That looks AWESOME! It’s beautiful. I want to kiss y

    (humor)(office)

    “OMG Denis. That looks AWESOME! It’s beautiful. I want to kiss you. Can I kiss you?”

    (laughter) “No.” (more laughter) “But you can give me money.”

    …

    He knows how to shut me up. lol.

    (with Denis Chmel)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 07:56:00 UTC

  • SURVEY QUESTION – WHAT WOULD YOU PAY FOR X? (To ask this question, I have to cre

    SURVEY QUESTION – WHAT WOULD YOU PAY FOR X?

    (To ask this question, I have to create enough of a procedural armature so that I an ask a question that has enough context so that it can stay on the rails.)

    ARMATURE

    Just as a bit of a thought experiment, lets say that Texas were to secede. Under the new government, they eliminated all taxes except income taxes. And replaced all local services with fee-based, and privatized all services. Assume Texas issued its own currency (the STAR or something like that) backed by oil reserves. (allowing credit money.)

    That US Constitution was rewritten based upon its original form with the 14th restored, and counties replacing states etc. And Original Intent was specifically stated. And equality was limited to equality under the law. Including language we now understand necessary for the security of individual property rights. Including a prohibition on common property in marriage (Dissolution by other than contribution must be pre-defined in a marriage contract.)

    That retirement was provided by forced savings by every person, and that some portion of income taxes were used to fill everyone’s retirement accounts. Representation was still used, but it was lottocratic, and separated into three floors: tax payers from the upper 50%, and ‘the top 100’. (purpose being to keep taxes flat through incentives.) And a house of services. The government itself was prohibited from providing services. And any services that were provided must be paid for out of current income. And that all citizens, regardless of contribution, could participate in the house of services by lottocratic vote. The constraint on the house of Services is that it must get its money from the houses of Order. And that the house of Order must get its approval from the house of Services. These organizations pass contracts, not laws. These contracts explain the sources and use of funds, are of fixed, short, duration, and cannot be broken by later governments. In a perfect world some family with long Texas history would be voted into a position of hereditary monarch, with veto power, the ability to disband the government and call an election, and no other. Lastly, you had to participate in a swiss model militia that required all men be armed and fit for combat against invaders.

    QUESTION:

    What percentage of your income would you be willing to pay to live in that society? In other words, assuming you might want something even more anarchic, but that this situation actually occurred, would you be willing to move there, and to encourage others to move there, for these conditions. And what amount of income tax would you be willing to pay ‘to get in?’

    I have my own thoughts but I’m just curious what others think.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-03 13:35:00 UTC