Design Thinking: oh…what now?
I smell fads from a distance – doesn’t help that I poke my nose into all things I can poke it into. Some fads are good though in that when they generate sufficient buzz, they get the attention of executives who may then allocate resources to the stuff that their staff may have been asking for […]
Projects and Project Management
For many years, I have had to repeatedly answer questions on what projects are and what the disciplined practice of project management is and I thought to write a quick and short primer here. This is no way exhaustive, but aimed at answering some of the questions many have about the discipline and possible help […]
User Stories – a condiment for success in delivery efforts
What: ‘User Stories’ is intended to break business requirements into their most basic unit, stating what is needed, by an actor, in other for an action to be completed. They generally follow the format below: <user> needs (MUST, COULD, WOULD) to be able to <Action> because <Reason> Why: Useful mostly in (pseudo-)agile delivery environments where […]
When marketing becomes strategy (or a key strategic pillar) – the case of Cialis’ challenge of Viagra’s market
The strategic question for Lilly Icos was whether it could influence how physicians perceived the importance of the criteria (longer lasting effects). The positioning was hotly debated prior to launch: Should the company centre its marketing strategy on Cialis’s lack of side effects, given that safety was already one of the two key criteria (met […]
Business analysts are not professional scribes
It is easy to reduce business analysts to scribes – those human recorders who type out the dictates of business into a business approved template. Which is then signed off by business and forced down IS/IT’s throat for implementation and all the other good things that happen in downstream. But is that really the function […]