Measuring the Impact of Charisma | Psychology Today

What we found was that people with a certain social style - a kind of energetic but focused listener - acted as "charismatic connectors." The more charismatic connectors a given team had among its members, the better the team performance was judged during the business plan pitch. One important point to remember here is that it was not simply one charismatic individual, but rather a charismatic team, that pushed them toward success.

"Requirements traceability - The Holy Grail"... - by Michael Stal: Requirements traceability – The Holy Grail

The big secret is requirements traceability. Each and every architectural decision must be strongly derived from forces (i.e., requirements and risks). This also helps to keep the architecture simple, expressive and balanced, because this way we can get rid of all these design pearls smart developers and architects typically invent.

"Managers at big companies often have more incentives to minimize costs, than to find new business or develop new ideas..." ☛ @berkun

Obsessive Optimization – When you have 5000 employees, or $500 million in revenue, fractions become significant. A .5%  increase in revenue is not a small thing, it’s a big thing. It can be bigger than many companies’ entire revenue. And as companies age the culture looks to optimize and refine, eventually to a point where the good things that led to all the success have been whittled away. Managers at big companies often have more incentives to minimize costs, than to find new business or develop new ideas since minimize costs or optimizing an existing process are cheaper wins that show results in the short term. In an optimization centric culture, the myopic love of short term wins can makes long term improvements, which often require short term sacrifices, hard to pull off.

"The deeper I got into TDD, the more I felt that my own journey had been less of a wax-on, wax-off..."

The deeper I got into TDD, the more I felt that my own journey had been less of a wax-on, wax-off process of gradual mastery than a series of blind alleys. I remember thinking “If only someone had told me that!” far more often than I thought “Wow, a door has opened.” I decided it must be possible to present TDD in a way that gets straight to the good stuff and avoids all the pitfalls.

My response is behaviour-driven development (BDD). It has evolved out of established agile practices and is designed to make them more accessible and effective for teams new to agile software delivery. Over time, BDD has grown to encompass the wider picture of agile analysis and automated acceptance testing.

The Management Myth...

For me, however, one of the most deeply disturbing passages came in the last chapter: "A recent study by the Aspen Institute appears to confirm that business school is, in fact, damaging to the moral fiber of students. Upon entering business school, the researchers found, students cherished noble ambitions to serve customers, create quality products, and otherwise contribute to the progress of humankind. By the time of their graduation, however, students were convinced that the only thing that matters is increasing shareholder value." Stewart suggests that many of our current problems may come from this corrupting influence of business schools.

Snowmaggedon froze economic activity for a few days, but those sales are mostly delayed, not lost

Wall Street Journal (@WSJ):
2/12/10 9:16 AM
Snowmaggedon froze economic activity for a few days, but those sales are mostly delayed, not lost http://on.wsj.com/bfXJVm

[Sent from my iPhone 3GS]

Cultivate Teams, Not Ideas

I wouldn't call ideas worthless, per se, but it's clear that ideas alone are a hollow sort of currency. Success is rarely determined by the quality of your ideas. But it is frequently determined by the quality of your execution. So instead of worrying about whether the Next Big Idea you're all working on is sufficiently brilliant, worry about how well you're executing.