Clarke Ching - More Chilli Please

AgileScotland public course: Intro to Agile, Lean and Kanban.

Next Friday, the 29th May, Rob Lally and I are teaching a one day workshop in Edinburgh entitled ‘An Introduction to Agile, Lean and Kanban’.

We’re charging a small fee (£30) to those who’re in full time employment: really, just enough to recoup the costs of renting the room. Entry is free to those who’re currently an ‘under-utilised resource’ (HR speak for unemployed).

If anyone is interested, please contact me at clarke.ching@gmail.com and I'll provide you with more details.

Deadlines improve performance

Tim Harford writes: 

Dear Economist,
I tend to procrastinate and leave tasks until the very last moment. As a consequence, I always feel as though I could have done more and that my potential has been somewhat unfulfilled. However, I find I concentrate much better and am more prolific with a deadline dangerously close. Can economics help me resolve this tension?
T.N., Limerick, Ireland

Dear T.N.,
The answer is obvious: make sure you always have a deadline to hand, and you will always be prolific. That, at least, is the logical implication of your letter. It is also backed up by research.
The behavioural economists Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch conducted an instructive study of procrastination with three groups of students at MIT. Each group had to complete three assignments over the course of the 12-week course. The first group had a separate deadline for each paper, after four, eight and 12 weeks. The second group had no intermediate deadlines: all three papers were due at the end of the course. Students in the third group were asked to impose their own deadlines.
Students with well-spaced deadlines – those in the first group and a subset in the third who had spaced out their deadlines – tended to achieve the highest grades. Students who had assigned themselves no intermediate deadlines, or had been assigned none, fared poorly.
You must learn this lesson. Ensure that a binding deadline is always looming. Chop up large tasks into smaller ones and assign a deadline for each one. If you do not have a professor willing to make these deadlines meaningful, you can do so yourself. Make firm commitments to your colleagues or clients. Alternatively, write out a schedule and make bets with a few friends that you’ll stick to it. If “the very last moment” is always “now”, you’ll be the world’s most productive procrastinator.

Life without twitter

I closed down my twitter account a few weeks ago, not because it's bad but because I let it suck away too much of my precious time.

Here're some of the things I would have twittered about today if I could have:

• http://tinyurl.com/pq44ef - Justin's webinar on using TOC with your sales force; I haven't watched it yet, but I will, and I think if you're into TOC or need to get more sales out of your sales force then you should too.
• http://www.wordplace.com/ap/  The free online version of Almost Perfect, a book long out-of-print, about the early days at word perfect.  According to my wise friend Rob Lally, it's  fascinating.
• http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/what-if-scientists-didnt-compete/ - from the New York times.  It asks "What if scientists didn't compete?"
• http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/what-you-dont-know-makes-you-nervous/?scp=1&sq=gilbert&st=cse. And this excellent, short, piece from Dan Gilbert about why uncertainty makes us unhappier than bad news.  

Simple Delish Appetiser

Heat your frying pan, slice you hallumi cheese, plop it on the pan.

While the cheese is cooking, peel a nice orange, slice it thinly with a sharp knife.

Flip the cheese slices, plop them out onto two plates, cover with the orange slices, grind pepper.

Eat.

Sent using my BlackBerry Bold - the thinking man's iphone. www.clarkeching.com +44(0)7920114893 Clarke Ching - Author of "Rolling Rocks Downhill" ... a business novel about software development; coming soon from the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Biggest phone in the world?

I'm sitting in a coffee shop preparing some training material. I look across and see this kid - a student, maybe 19 - talking on this ginormous mibile phone. It was about the size of the small panini his mate was eating. It had big, big, buttons. I kinda felt sorry for him until he put it down.

It was his scientific calculator.

Sent using my BlackBerry Bold - the thinking man's iphone. www.clarkeching.com +44(0)7920114893 Clarke Ching - Author of "Rolling Rocks Downhill" ... a business novel about software development; coming soon from the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Silk and Spinach ...

Kevin points to a write up about a TOC-focused session he co-ran with Allan Kelly: http://silkandspinach.net/2009/05/18/lean-constraints-action-write-up/

Lean Kanban conference London.

David Anderson announces:

My friends Rob Hathaway (who gave a really great presentation at Lean & Kanban 2009 Miami) and Jason Smith (of Indigo Blue in London) together with Karl Scotland (EMC Consulting) are organizing a European version of our Miami conference. 

It's called Lean Kanban (UK) 2009 and it's in London at the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts (RSA) on September 27th - 29th. The list of speakers is impressive with confirmed key notes from Don Reinertsen and Mary Poppendieck as well as an appearance from John Seddon who is a well known Lean advocate in the UK and experienced introducing Lean to Healthcare and Government sectors. Other speakers include Hal Macomber of the Lean Project Institute who uses Lean techniques in construction project management plus leading Kanban thinkers such as Corey Ladas, Kenji Hiranabe and Jeff Patton. 

On-line registration opens soon. You can pre-register today by calling Indigo Blue directly. Places are filling up. Our event in Miami created quite a buzz. Numbers are limited to just 200. Do not miss out. Kanban has a lot of momentum in London and we fully expect the event to sell out early. I hope to see you in London in September. Use conftag #lkuk09 when discussing the event on TwitterTec

codecs

I found this little snippet from the Telegraph's "Ask Rick" useful:

Vista Video Problem
I have just bought a new PC with Windows Vista to replace a Windows XP PC. I am having problems running .AVI video files in WMP on the new PC despite the fact that they ran perfectly on my old XP PC. On the new PC all I get is the sound. What am I doing wrong and how do I configure WMP to run these files properly.
John Waterfall, by email
Windows Media Player in Vista should be able to play most .avi files straight out of the box, but contrary to popular belief .avi is not a video format. It’s a ‘container’ format, which basically means it’s a way of transporting several different types multimedia files. Your PC may lack the necessary coding/decoding software or ‘codecs’ needed to replay the video, or if it has them, they may be corrupt. One way to find out is to use a freeware tool called Gspot (tinyurl.com/c5jzab). This tells you which codecs you have on your PC, and if there are problems with any of them. If your installed codecs get a clean bill of health then I suggest you download the K-Lite codec ‘pack’, which contains just about every audio and video codec you are ever likely to need. It’s free and you’ll find a link to the download at:tinyurl.com/d9efae

James May's Plasticine Garden at Chelsea Flower show.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardeningpicturegalleries/5343082/Chelsea-Flower-Show-2009-James-Mays-Plasticine-Garden.html

It looks good!  

RocksIntoGold on amazon.com

Hey!  You can now buy RocksIntoGold from Amazon.com!

If you've previously read the book then ... I cannot tell you how delighted and grateful I would be if you were take a few minutes to add a review.  Please!

If you've not read the book then send me an email and I'll send you a pdf.  You don't need to add a review to amazon in return but if you do, then thanks!

You can still read the book for free on slideshare.net (over 7,500 people have read it so far).  Some people have left some very kind comments.