Part of the Process

Photo by  Matthew Spiteri  on  Unsplash Inspired by this tweet I have decided to do a follow up to what I have learned in 2017 , with what I have "unlearned" Try it the other way around…. What have you unlearned / let go of this year? https://t.co/uzbsumUzh7 — Dan Creswell (@dancres) December 30, 2017 I really like this idea, as looking back I suspect most of the time I’ve truly learned something I’ve been able to let go. In 2018 I am going to be much more mindful about whether fear or learning drives adding new ideas/skills/practices this year. I feel that it is much easier to layer on new skills while you learn them, without thinking about what in your tool kit is no longer useful ... or at least if the effort outweighs  the benefit/impact  of not doing it. The main thing I have let go of this year has been no longer worrying about agile/scrum ceremonies and artifacts. Along with the main team I work with, I have moved to a much mor...

Hobbies are a great way to relax and unwind from work. They are also an excellent opportunity to practice some skills and learn about yourself.  Photography shows a clear visual representation of how practice with tools can improve output . Running I have found has taught me a couple of lessons about performance and motivation. Here are my top four Goals are important   An arbitrary goal, doesn't fit in any plan but I feel good Yes, even arbitrary goals . As long as they have a narrative that you can use as a guide. They provide a sense of progress and small achievements to celebrate.  For example as an individual runner, it makes no real difference to my life running 10km just under an hour. Or a bit faster at 51 minutes. But the difference in the sense of pride and achievement in my progress was real.  Your environment matters Periodically I pause from running then have to restart. Sometimes this also involved a house move and I need to find a new r...

The Rosetta Stone, British Museum by Gary Denham I've dealt with work flows that result in communications for many years and one trend that I've noticed over the past 5 or so years is that unlike previous communications channels, wh ich might have remain relatively small and fragmented before they become widespread, there are now various avenues for communication and people will be comf ortable using more than one ; even fr om the same device . For example, I have friends that will use email, F acebook messaging, WhatsApp, Snapchat and SMS (or iMessage) between the same set of people depending on both the context and content of the messages. Some background I was recently at a conference where Patrice About from AirFrance made the point about various customer service aspects for airlines now don't have a single way of achieving that service and passengers expect to use the most convenient method available to them, for...

Beach Snowman Xmas cards available As the festive season gets into full swing, I am glad that I am not reliant on using mass public transport before I can relax and enjoy myself this year. Especially after reading the news this morning - predicting rail disruption caused by  floods in the mild weather .  For around the past decade my day job has involved helping travel companies in passenger communications; as distilled into these top tips of  The 3 Big Ideas In Managing Passenger Disruption  or in  Managing Travel Disruption  that looks at more crisis orientated passenger communications. [edit: these links are now dead, more up-to-date take on  Disruption management: Your opportunity to impress  or  Travel Disruption Management: Tech Opportunities in the Travel Industry ] But from the small journeys that I have taken in the past week, whether by bus or train, one takeaway has been that small delays can be frustrating when you don't k...

"How do you learn how to use a code base?" a very simple question from a junior developer that has prompted a lot of thought. To be honest it's been a while since I was last at that point and it's so long ago I can't remember learning a new code base. But my advice was to learn and study the code, run it change it, see where it breaks. Do the same with other open source projects to deliberately learn how to learn code bases. Also do this outside of work, where there isn't the same pressure to deliver or perform.  Apparently that wasn't a great answer as I got the reply, "What if you've got a life?", so a little motivation was in order :-) I've written about this before and point 3 from a W.S. Humphrey quote in my previous blog post on motivation and management was " the training and support to enable the work to be properly done". There are various training courses and sites available for teaching specific skills or technolog...