If I could only listen to one podcast

September 25th, 2011

I was speaking to @therealdamo a while ago about the podcast you listen and how the ‘good’ ones changes the way you think and the way you do things.

Each week I listen to around podcast each week, but what would I keep if I could only have 1.

“… thinking music”

For me I can say without a doubt it would be Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders.  With a mix of great speakers great topics this is a must have on your iThing.

Every time I listen it makes me re-think the way I’m approaching things that I’m working on and, even better, a motivational boost that you can make the difference.

Give it a listen, I guarantee it won’t disappoint.

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Think about it

May 2nd, 2011

“Real Artists Ship”

Steve Jobs

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Problem Teams & Solution Teams

April 28th, 2011

How many times have you started work on designing solutions to problems that are ill defined or don’t exist at all.  I was reading through this post and the thing that struck me was the diagram about half way down.

Diagram 1 shows the product development lifecycle and each of the steps to getting to market.

Diagram 2 shows another way to think about it in terms of a team responsible for defining a problem and a team responsible for solving that problem.

It goes onto about who might be in each of the team and, most importantly for me, what roles work in both teams. I’d recommend giving it a read and having a think about how it relates to your product development cycle.

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Top down vs bottom up prioritisation

April 11th, 2011

Here is a common pattern that I see in prioritisation session

Person A : “Here’s the list, what’s the priority?”

Person B “Well I don’t need these things so they go at the bottom.”

…. stop

Notice what happened?

People started talking about what isn’t important to them instead of what is important.

Why is this?

If you commit to a bottom priority then everything else is in the mix and you haven’t had to make an actual decision yet.

Why is this bad?

In the bottom up prioritisation the top priority is driven by what is left once you moved everything to the bottom.  The top priority then represents the most important thing of the pile of things I didn’t need/want.

The top down prioritisation represents the choice of the thing you want at the sacrifice of all else. This shows you have a true understanding of what is important and that you are willing to commit.

So next time you’re in the session don’t delay the decision and show the team you know what you want.

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