Work: Siemens

2006-current

Project Failure Rates

Consider this:

1. On average, about 70 percent of all IT-related projects fail to meet their objectives
2. Nearly half of respondents reported at least one project failure in the past year
3. Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) stated 35% of IT projects fail
4. 35% of all requirements change within the duration of any given project

References

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/10/29/011029opsurvival.html
http://www.it-cortex.com/Stat_Failure_Rate.htm
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?s=stating%20the%20obvious

Multi-Monitor Productivity

Does having more then on computer monitor increase productivity?

Some research I did on the subject found:

• http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=433
• http://lifehacker.com/software/dual-monitor/dual-monitors-increase-productivity-168488.php
• http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/gxm/products/dh2go/home.php

Vedors

Hardware

• http://digitaltigers.com/index.shtml?gclid=CJv0uqGo6I8CFR7qYAodNR8dkA
• http://www.9xmedia.com

Software

• http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm
• www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon

Hardware/Software Combo

• http://www.maxivista.com

Scrum

Today I learned about Scrum, a new way of thinking about Project Management. The video I watched was located here (a lecture @ Google). In addition I found some links on the Internet which  included

• http://www.controlchaos.com
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scrumdevelopment
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring 
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29

Key findings from the Google video included:

indicator of future performance based on sactual to date

 

 the “velocity of release”

  

Quotes from the video:

• When we are told to do more, we cut quality without telling a soul… - not a good thing according to the author
• 35% of all requirements change within the duration of any given project (due to 25 years of using the waterfall method)
• Scrum, you must deliver one customer facing functionality component within every sprint

Also, one last video on Scrum (with a good into soundtrack, but bad acting) I found is located here.

Enjoy!

Microsoft Office 2007

peeves:

Word 2007:

• Right-clicking on a misspelled word does not always bring up the context menu that includes word suggestions. I’ll update this post with the two step process that you must follow each time you have a misspelled word to correct in Word 2007.

for example, here I have a misspelled word underlined in red:

the first time I right click the word I get:

which does not give me a list of suggestions for the misspelling. For that I must (a) click away then, (b) re-right click on the mispelled word and then I get the option of relacing it as shown: