My learning

Deconstruction

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In my last post I came to the sobering realisation that to get to the mystery blockage I would need to strip down the entire engine. This wasn’t the absolute first time I had done this. I remember the last time, it was 1990, I was eighteen, the vehicle was a Datsun 180B, and I … Read more

Using Agile tools to eat the elephant

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It was during this period of just scooting around on the FZR that I realised that I needed to do a couple of things differently. First up, I needed to accept that this restoration project was rapidly turning into a ‘down the rabbit hole’ experience, as I’d heard can happen with restoration projects. A flow-on … Read more

Launching the Digital Workplace (and where to from here)

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I’ve written a few times about the Digital Workplace project that I’ve been the Product Owner for this year, and it gave me great pleasure to be part of the launch team this week as we rolled out the first phase of our ‘product’ – Trello. But when the tool you’re launching is already freely available, and you know that plenty of people have already started using it, then what exactly is there to launch?

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The Digital Workplace – solution selling as a catalyst for business change

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Back in August I wrote a post about the Digital Workplace project that I’d been invited to participate in as Product Owner, and I promised I’d share updates along the way. In that post I also mentioned that I wanted us to use a solution selling model as a way to drive adoption across the University, and that’s the element I want to touch on today. I also want to point out a couple of things that the solution selling model doesn’t quite nail, and talk about how important it is for us as a project to address those shortcomings.

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Applying a startup mindset to internal IT projects

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A few weeks back I wrote a post about the kick off of a Digital Workplace project, encompassing synchronous collaboration (such as live chat), asynchronous collaboration (document sharing/collaboration) and project planning/management. I wrote about two strategies that jumped to mind – using a Solution Selling approach to drive adoption (noting that the tools we’re looking at are already freely available, if not readily used), and to ‘dogfood’ the tools within the governance group before expanding out to ‘real’ customers.

Today I want to add a third strategy – applying a startup mindset and principles to what is an internal IT project.

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