Link: http://talentretention.com/Beyond-Generations.html

I got around to doing some reading one lunchtime this week about the differences between the active generations as defined by sociologists. The ones we all hear about are:

Silents              1930-1945
Baby Boomers         1945-1964
Generation X         1965-1980
Generation Y         1981-2000
Millenials           2000-present

I don't think we are about to see any Millenials in the workplace, except possibly on "Bring Your Child To Work" days...however, the other generations are out there. There are not many Silents, but they are still to be found, working away. Generation Y is making its way into the workplace.
Officially, according to this classification, I am a Baby Boomer, since I was born in 1955. However, when I read the defining characteristics of Baby Boomers and compare them to the other generational characteristics, it is not that simple...for example, although I still have trouble seeing the employer-employee relationship in purely transactional terms (a classic Baby Boomer characteristic), I have the love of music of a Generation X person, and the tech-savviness of a Generation Y person.
I guess this is a powerful personal illustration of the danger of "broad-brush" stereotypes. An alternative view is that, as a natural contrarian, I am like Groucho Marx, who famously said "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member"...

Link: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

This book and an associated collection of essays at 37 Signals has some very interesting thoughts about how to build software.

Link: http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/tony_collins/2009/02/top-tips-for-project-managers.html

Remember; one person's cynicism is another person's realism...

There is also this one...

Most of us by now have been struggling with the tendency of corporations to replace front-end telephone answering people with Voice Response systems.
On the surface, this makes a lot of sense. Why pay humans to perform the task of routing calls to the appropriate internal support function when you can automate the process using software?
Unfortunately...voice recognition solutions seem to not be advancing in sophistication. Here in the USA, because I have a British accent, I seem to have more trouble than some people in even getting correctly routed inside a VR solution. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard the soft female voice saying something like "we did not understand your response. Please repeat or say "agent". This is not counting the VR solutions that have unresolved branches, where an attempt to return to the beginning of a dialogue is impossible, and you have to disconnect and re-dial. This is an elementary failure in both design and testing of the solution.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some enterprising individuals set up a web site where you can find out how to crash through VR front-ends and get to talk to a real live human being. This is GetHuman. I have yet to spend any time using it, since I do not have an immediate requirement to enter VR Hell again, but I intend to consult when that time (inevitably) arrives.

One of the big challenges right now in the USA is the sheer speed and scale in which large corporations are responding to the economic downturn by laying off workers. AT&T was the latest large employer to announce over 14,000 layoffs yesterday, but that is just one example.
For a publicly-quoted corporation, it is a sad fact of life that markets generally approve of firings more than hirings. You can be sure that if AT&T leadership, instead of announcing 14,400 layoffs, had instead issued a statement along the lines of "we're not laying off any employees because they are our most valuable asset" the stock price would have dropped like a stone as the marketplace concluded that they were "not serious" about cutting costs.
Underlying AT&T's decision is a conventional wisdom that has the potential to drag the USA into a spiral of deflation. Laid-off employees stop spending, and if they have debts, some of their debt-financed assets may be repossessed, which will further depress asset values...you can see where this is headed. The inflationary pressure of the Federal Reserve expanding the money supply may be swamped by the deflationary pressure of nobody spending any money on anything except essentials.
Exploring that issue is for another time, another place. The whole cascade of bad news about job losses was thrown into sharp relief for me by this Fast Company article about Cisco, which has bucked the marketplace trend by announcing that it does not intend to lay off employees. The article makes it clear that the "no layoffs" pledge is an integral consequence of a leadership strategy which is about 180 degrees removed from the "command and control" strategy that some corporations still operate under (and which many corporations revert to in times of stress).
This begs the wider question of how many corporations operate like Cisco. The consultancy WordBlu, which helps corporations to transition to a more democratic leadership style, is beginning to compile a list of corporations that have embraced stewardship as a model instead of some form of benevolent dictatorship, which is the model that I see returning right now in the USA, as corporations react to adversity by firing their "most important assets" by the thousand. (NOTE to corporate leaders - if employers regard employees as expendable when there is a downturn, do not be surprised if your employees regard their employers as expendable in an upturn. Paybacks can be hell...).
UPDATE - Commenter mook makes the point that corporations usually announce layoffs with a fanfare, while most hiring is relatively stealthy. This may be true some of the time, but it is not true all of the time. Many US corporations (including my employer) have for a long time been laying off employees in small numbers at frequent intervals, in order to not have to conform to the requirements of the WARN Act. At least as many employees have been let go stealthily by that approach as have been laid off in publicly announced layoffs. The other thing I would note is that the very act of not announcing hirings tends to support my basic point - corporations get more brownie points from the marketplace by being seen to be cutting costs via firing than they gain by announcing that they are hiring. It is almost like hiring is a source of shame, but firing is a source of pride. If true, this really tells you a lot about a fundamental dysfunctionality of modern corporate America.

Link: http://tynerblain.com/blog/category/requirements/

Tyner Bain has a large pile of articles covering the vexed issue of Requirements Management. He is also a Scrum Master, which is a delivery approach that I have tried in the past with some success.

Link: http://www.vitalsmarts.com/

...are very common in most businesses. We are all wearily familiar with the change initiative launched in a blaze of glory by the CEO that rapidly becomes a joke within the corporation, fizzles out and leaves everybody connected with it frustrated or burned.
One challenge is that changing fundamental ways of doing things in a corporation requires a lot of people to put aside existing ways not only of working, but viewing the world. This often collides with the deep values of the people. They suffer from irresolvable cognitive dissonances trying to do so, and back off, especially if they suspect that the initiaitive is merely "CEO Hot Button Of The Year" (which it often is). This mindset is bolstered by the fact that in many corporations, the tenure of front-line workers greatly exceeds that of leaders, who often move onto new roles within 3-4 years. Workers who do not want to embrace the change can simply wait out the change until the promoting leader moves on, then continue in old behaviours.
When chellenged overtly to change, many people respond with dysfunctional behaviours running the whole spectrum from over resistance to covert resistance, bluster, bullying and other unpleasant outbursts. Many times, these behaviours are tolerated because as humans, we tend to shy away from confrontation. For every guy who wants to wade into a fight, there are 20 or so who want to ignore it.
This website deals with some of the issues surrounding dysfunctional behaviour and resistance to change in corporations. I may try to attend some of their webinars. I am going to expand this posting as I find other useful resources.

...is rearing its ugly head in my world, as I work on a sales pursuit in the Pacific North-West. The prospective client has a (self-admitted) poor track record in defining and managing requirements. Ever since I started work in I.T. 30 years (!) ago, requirements have been a consistent theme in my work life. I started out as a maintenance programmer, and rapidly discovered the phenomenon of the dissatisfied customer. Conversation goes something like this:
Customer: This does not meet my requirement
I.T: We coded it according to the specification
Customer: Yes, but what you delivered is not what I wanted
I.T: How can this be?
(both parties stare at each other in bafflement and puzzlement)

9 times out of 10, such conversations occur because of ambiguities or omissions in the requirements. Which brings us to the great underlying challenge of requirements; instead of being written in a language that is suitable for specifying software, requirements are (mostly) written in natural languages, which are highly suitable for conveying nuance and ambiguity...which makes them a poor natural fit for any communication process that requires as little ambiguity as possible. This blog posting neatly explains the underlying issue, using a well-known nursery rhyme as an example...

This article at Social Media Today shows how bad decisions in customer service, which previously would most likely have not become newsworthy, can rapidly spread all over the world thanks to the Internet and social media. The article concludes:

Brands can no longer wait until an issue hits mainstream media to react, nor can they rely on their positive relations with editors at a few media outlets to help protect their brand. Social media is changing the way brands must manage and monitor their brands.

Link: http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Trends/Social-Networks-at-Work-PromisebrBottomLine-Results/