aktually

the art of the rethink, where business meets design

Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

A Scrum a day keeps the management away

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A rugby scrum as opposed to how software engineers do it.

Scrum meeting snapshot.

I’m sure you know about apples and doctors and whatnot; I’ve also found that Scrums are just like that too.  It’s a foundational tool for any team that’s becoming “agile”, and a great starting point to work Scrum principles into an organization for a lot of reasons.

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Written by Andrew

May 14th, 2010 at 11:55 am

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Useful Communication Starts with Useful Pictures

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Napoleon's March of 1812 and 1813

C. Minard's Depiction of Napoleon's Invasion of Moscow and Russia in 1812 and 1813

I recently finished reading Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin,” which is a great introductory and reference book on communicating with pictures.  I also spotted Seth Godin’s blog post commenting on this NYTimes post and its validity.  And last but not least, one of my favorite examples of multiple dimensions of data plotted on a single illustration is explained by Edward Tufte.  I mention all of these examples because it’s easy to make a bad picture, but not too hard to make a really good one.

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Written by Andrew

December 29th, 2009 at 7:46 pm

The Little Company that Won’t Die: Chrysler

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chrysler_minivan_jeep_viperThe minivan. The sport-utility vehicle. The modern take on American “muscle” cars. These are all areas that Chrysler has innovated in and marketed well over the past 4 decades. However, being the smallest of the Detroit “Big Three,” Chrysler has also had a troubled history of keeping up from a business perspective. It’s been through 2 bankruptcies, 3 mergers/acquisitions, and a variety of economic conditions that have ranged from great to grinding. So why does Chrysler matter, particularly from a product development perspective?

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Written by Andrew

June 11th, 2009 at 7:24 pm

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Evolving Management Theory and Small Businesses Using Specialized Services

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An interesting article came up recently in the NYTimes that talked about how management models and practices have evolved, as opposed to the more commonly examined lens, as the original author put it, of focusing on the lessons to be gained for more precise economic policy and theory. In short, Mr. Lohr points to an insight by John Hagel III, the co-director of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation, as particularly interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Andrew

April 1st, 2009 at 2:29 am

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