Articles on management, technology and Agile

Leadership Course – “What is a Leader”

Category: Management
Published on May 29, 2007 by

ACS recently started a new course entitled "Growing Team Leaders" that I feel might compliment my management reading and learning. This post is the first in a series associated with the course.

The first session, "What is a Leader", presented by John Ware of Dale Carnegie Training was on this month. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of skills I was already aware of and am doing as part of my role. There were however a few points that I can continue to work on. One I particularly liked was "Micro manager yourself, macro manage your team". What this essentially means is manage your own time and tasks in detail and provide guidance to your people, trusting them to do their job.

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Another Ephox Blogger

Category: Hamstaa!
Published on May 27, 2007 by

Like many tech companies, we support our employees blogging, so it was great to see that Suneth has joined the growing number of people at Ephox that blog.

Suneth is the constant in our support team. He is forever looking for ways to improve the experience our clients have when they come to support. His formula for support in his first post, "Life in Ephox" illustrates this dedication.

I look forward to seeing where Suneth takes his blog. I'm sure there will be some interesting insights into providing outstanding support. He is definitely an "important fish in the small pond!"

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Developers in Support

Category: Management
Published on May 26, 2007 by

One thing I've strived to maintain as engineering has grown, is the involvement of engineers in support. Why? Andy hit the nail on the head with his recent post on "All of our developers start in support". In it he said,

You can’t get a good feel for what customers want when you’re sitting behind your IDE listening to product managers. Only on the front lines can you hope to understand what people want to do with your product and how you can make it better.

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Getting Dirty with AJAX

Category: Technical
Published on May 11, 2007 by

This week I've been delving into the actual technicalities of implementing some AJAX goodies with a view to both understanding the limitations and advantages of them.

In my lead-up reading, everything pointed to using an established framework, so I chose Script.aculo.us as a starting point. After an hour of playing I had lost all my awe of the drag-n-drop and roll-up type effects I had seen. With a good framework these become so simple. The challenge then, is to use the effects wisely 🙂

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Change brings Opportunity

Category: Management
Published on May 2, 2007 by

Before Easter, on a visit from the States, Andrew (the CEO) restructured the engineering team by moving two of the senior engineers into product management roles. The aim of this restructure for the business is to bring a dedicated focus into building successful products to the product development part of the company. Andrew has discussed some of his reasoning behind the change in "Organizing for Innovation (Part 1) – Why?"

While talking about the proposed change and how it would affect my team as well as myself, my wife Helen reminded me of a book I'd read many years ago. Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Johnson talks about how change affects people. Presented in the form of a parable, it features "Sniff & Scurry" and "Hem & Haw" whose cheese one day disappears. As Haw goes through the process of finding "new cheese", he provides insights into how to handle change in a series of "writings on the wall". The following one

Enjoy Change! – Savor the adventures and enjoy the taste of new cheese!

got me thinking about what opportunities the restructure would bring.

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