Five for Friday – November 29, 2019

In early January, I’ll hit my 19 year anniversary of working at Microsoft (I’ve worked for Microsoft 18.5 years, and as a vendor at Microsoft for the first 5 months or so). There’s been a lot of change over the years, but perhaps never as much as is going on right now. We’re getting a…

Coming in a little late tonight. Today was a day off from work, and my non-computer errand list took up most of my day. Once again, here are a few interesting things from my week. More than half of Americans (and 62% of adults) have had at least the first dose of the covid-19 vaccine….

I’m reading the Lean Product Playbook – which has this quote (similar to the Poppendiek quote I also frequently mention.As Dave McClure of 500 Startups said, “Customers don’t care about your solution. They care about their problems.” Here’s an article on two of my favorite things – Kanban and Crossing the Chasm – Crossing the…

Status meetings are boring. More importantly, status meetings are unneeded. Meetings are for discussion, and updates on status rarely require that (until, of course, they do). Nothing – nothing is more painful than sitting through a meeting where people go around the table and say, “Today, I’m doing X”.  Hopefully nothing alarming so far. A lot of teams…

(part 1 is here) My official full-time start date at Microsoft was June 6, 1995. The first release candidate for Windows 95 was June 8, so in a way I started just in time – I started in time to get the Win95 ship gift (limited edition of windows 95), and also got a watch…

I journeyed into public last weekend…and caught a cold. Fortunately, I’m well on the mend, but after a whole lot of isolation over the last four years, being sick is rare – in face, other than my one time bout of COVID last August, this has probably been the only time I’ve been sick since…