Where we stand today

Before the “war on terror” America was well regarded. We actually had an advantage in the global economy — as a global superpower that had not abused our power (at least not too blatantly) we were by and large looked upon favorably. We had a big stick, and as long as we didn’t use it, [...]

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The Decline of Education in the Corporate Empire

I recently read The Decline Of Education In California by Sarah Knopp, a chapter in California Under Corporate Rule (Peter Miguel Camejo). As a treatise on the state of our education system it’s thought provoking but horribly dismaying. Education has been on a decline throughout the United States since the 1970’s and it’s not stopping. [...]

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Quality as a way of life

I’m getting tired of discovering projects that focus on “quality assurance” as if its entire breadth where encompassed in simple regression testing conducted after a product is supposedly ready for release.
Managing software quality is not simply creating a test program during a late-phase testing period. In fact, addressing quality assurance in this way is too [...]

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Navigating the methodology maze

Project managers and team leaders have an extensive array of development methodologies at their disposal. Over the past 20 years methodologies to fill every conceivable development need have evolved. Rapid development techniques, long-range waterfall or spiral management models, “extreme” programming and iterative methodologies only name a few. Each one targets a different perceived project need, [...]

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Mission impossible — the art of choosing the right project

Entrepreneurs, particularly those with a strong vested interest and long history with a product, can be terribly persuasive. Years of tuning the message and creating an infectiously exciting atmosphere makes them skilled at converting skeptics. Becoming excited about a product is wonderful, but don’t let the euphoria of the moment overshadow the concrete facts.

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The twenty-year setback

Our average CEO is paid over 400 times the average employee salary (as compared with European companies that pay about 15 times the average employee’s salary). Our educational system has been tuned to a point where it turns out perfectly trained, niche-oriented graduates that know their profession — and waste no time on economic, political [...]

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Organizational evolution

A little while ago I started a topic on “Why smart people defend bad ideas.” After some of my recent work touched closely on similar topics I felt the urge to put down ink and revisit the whole subject in more depth.
Scott Berkun brings up some good points that are all too often at the [...]

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Rough seas

Early in the decade, right around 2000 through 2002, I witnessed such an incredible increase in overseas outsourcing of technology work that our economy seemed doomed to suffer fallout — and to be sure, reckless ventures that attempted to wholesale outsource entire projects suffered many a demise as the technology bubble “burst.”
This was a good [...]

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The folder is irrelevant

In an attempt to delve deeper (and hopefully not rehash) this topic, I thought I’d blather on about how information overload and the currently limited filing system in computers is a problem.
Information overload is going to cause a change in the landscape. Paper documents need a physically appropriate mechanism to store them — and of [...]

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    This is me. Martial artist, zen student, programmer, writer and author, technologist, father of two, photographer and a resident of Los Angeles (well, the outskirts of it).

    I also publish Rational Scrum and am President & CEO of Hyrax International LLC, delivering comprehensive process improvements to its clientele. Specialities include audit and assessment of program areas such as project management, quality assurance, risk management and customer satisfaction as well as delivering focused initiatives to improve customer efficiency.

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