Tuesday, March 25, 2008

New Book on Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior

If you do project work, you need to read the latest book from Tom Demarco and his co-authors, Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior.

This book captures memorable names for frequently encountered situations (project patterns). I am sure these phrases will be used in the future to paint the right concept for a given context and enhance the communication. Some of the patterns:

• Project Sluts—managers who can’t say no
• Soviet Style—building the product no one can love
• Hidden Beauty—an ethic that drives great developers
• News Improvement—status gets rosier as it rises in the organization
• Dead Fish—learning to appreciate project odor

and many more

Sunday, March 23, 2008

When it's time to quit?

It is time to quit when you realize you have been saturated and you need to open the space for your friends to move things forward. If you are working on project O then it is keeping you away from doing project N. It is time to quit when you think what you are changing is small and you can create a much bigger change and opportunity for your friends by conquering a new horizon.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Something that’s framed as a loss is really effective at changing behavior

From NPR Radio:

"Yale professors Ian Ayres, an expert in contract law, and Dean Karlan, a behavioral economist, both entered weight loss bets. And both won. They took off the weight they pledged.

With their new company, StickK.com, they hope to facilitate personal commitment contracts for weight loss and other types of personal goals. If you don't live up to your end of the contract, StickK will give your money to charity or a person you designate. The service is free to registered users. The professors, ultimately, hope to make money through advertising revenues."

“What we know about incentives is that people work a lot harder to avoid losing $10 than they will work to gain $10,” explains Ayres. “So something that’s framed as a loss is really effective at changing behavior.”

Some psychologist estimates the negative effect for an average loss to be up to 2.5 the magnitude of a positive one; it will lead to an emotional deficit. I have seen this effect when my team of 11-12 years old losing a soccer game (big deal) where winning seems just a normal thing.