Imagine a workplace where not only you can work without impediments to your progress, but one where you have a say in what and how you do it? And to top of it you’re much more productive and successful and so is your ultimate business customer.

So what’s the catch? You simply have to drop the current way you work and adopt something called Scrum.

What is Scrum? The origins of the word come from the sport rugby, where a tight formation of players move and work together to get the ball forward. The term Scrum here has its origins on software development, where a small team of people work closely together to build software. The difference is in how they build it – using an iterative cycle of a few usable features at a time rather than defining everything upfront, then months (or years) later receiving software with all of the features.

The later process I described above is commonly referred to as “waterfall.” As one giant cycle produces all software (or the falling water) and the remaining project time is used to fix bugs and make changes in the business process (or the water flowing from the waterfall). It is far from a perfect system, especially as it doesn’t take into consideration business changes, let alone end users not always knowing what they want, both upfront or a year from now!

The former process I described above is Scrum, and was created in the 1990’s by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. This book, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, is written by Sutherland, and presented in a format to introduce Scrum to the wider world outside of software.

As someone who has built software all of my professional career and then some and has used scrum formally in some of my past roles, I was interested to read this book, not only because it is written by one of the co-founders of Scrum, but to learn more how it can be used in other aspects of business and life.

Among my many thoughts from reading Scrum, I have the following takeaways:

• Building software – or anything really – is a journey – It’s hard to be perfect and know upfront everything you will possibly need in software you will use. Rather, admit it is a journey, build it over time, and get it closer to your needs while getting functioning features along the way.
• You have to be committed to Scrum to reap its true potential – Dipping your toes in the Scrum swimming pool will not give you the benefits of it. You have to fully commit to it. If you are hesitant to commit, read the book.
• If you don’t do it someone else will – Scrum as a framework is always gaining in popularity, and the number of people becoming certified in Scrum as well. If you or your organization is resistant to it, realize more organizations are always adopting it.
• I want to be Scrum Certified more now than before – after reading the book and hearing Sutherland’s stories of Scrum’s successes in business and beyond, I really want to take formal Scrum training and become certified more than I did before reading the book.

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time is a great read, for those who work in business or any organization. I wish I had this book years ago when I was starting my Web consulting business – not just for building the Web software but for the overall running of my business. It is packed with stories of its successful use in various industries. Though it is very supportive of Scrum, it is not a “fluffy” and rah-rah story – it gets straight to the point and reinforces all that is stated. The book concludes with a step-by-step plan for deploying Scrum.

This is the part of my book takeaways where I disclose why I read a book. As I said, when I heard of it, I needed to get it and bought it myself, and for 2 reasons. The first and most important is that I wanted to read the story. The second and anecdotal reason is that I once worked at the same company as Jeff Sutherland, and we once had a brief work-related phone call. As I read Scrum, I could hear his no-nonsense style, which added to the reading.

As I conclude this post, I have not decided whom to give the book to, as it is something I do after I read one. If you are interested let me know. If you have read the book, or based on this are interested to, I welcome your thoughts in the comments to this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Book Take-Aways • Build • Business • Agile / Scrum • Strategize • Technology • Thrive • (2) Comments • Permalink

Where the Anchorman movies were a good laugh, weaved in between the puns was a story of both the “golden age” of local broadcast television and the genesis of cable television, which had a transformative effect on local television.

As I grew up in western Massachusetts, the local TV station to watch was WWLP channel 22 in Springfield, MA. It was an NBC affiliate who consistently was the ratings leader for news and local programming. Part of that local programming included editorials by the station’s president, Bill Putnam, which were highly informative, opinionated and entertaining. When I heard that Putnam and his then business partner (and now wife) Kitty Broman Putnam wrote a memoir about the formation and the behind-the-scenes of the operations of WWLP, I had to get a copy of it. That memoir, How We Survived in UHF Television A Broadcasting Memoir 1953-1984, includes insider information and photos about not only the founding of the TV station, but the UHF television band and entities like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Though there are many tales which are local to western Massachusetts, from places to politicians, it is a book for anyone who is interested in broadcast communications and its history. For someone like myself who is interested in that and local history in general, it is an interesting tale, spanning over 30 years, of the creation, evolution and positioning of a local television station during a time when broadcast television was evolving and positioning as well. It was of course interesting to learn the why’s and what-else’s about the TV station that I probably spent too much time watching during my own evolution and positioning.

Learning the “inside baseball” of WWLP (whose call letters come from Putnam’s full name, William Lowell Putnam) was of course a great takeaway for me from this book, but there were others that make this an interesting read for others, including:

• Entrepreneurial ventures come different forms - When you think of a business labeled with the word “entrepreneur” one often thinks of a small space with a shoestring budget in a remote office. This was the case with WWLP, whose studios were atop a mountain and was built by Putnam and other staff. Where what you saw on TV looked polished and expensive, it was far from that, and the station also had a stable of investors who help funded the lean operation. Plus in those days, long before high-definition television, studio sets could have been made of cardboard colored by markers and you wouldn’t know the difference.
• The tools are always getting better - This is a term I use quite a bit, especially when describing the evolution of my former Web consulting business, where changes in technology often drove changes in the business model. The same can be said for television, whether it was in broadcast transmitters or from black and white to color pictures. Being aware of these changes and having the capital – both money and time – to address and adapt to them is important in the survival and thriving of any business.
• You’ve got to know when to fold ‘em - Putnam, Broman and company sold WWLP in the mid-1980’s and got out of broadcasting altogether. This was in the early days of the large expansion of cable TV across the US. Though local broadcast stations would get their signal carried on the cable, the revenue model for those same local stations was not defined, nor was it understood what the real impact of cable would be on broadcast. With this on the horizon, Putnam got out of the business early, at a time when he was able to sell for a good profit.

Though How We Survived… hasn’t made many national top-seller lists, it is an entertaining read. It starts technical where Putnam goes into the definitions of what the story of people and places is about. It then ends with recipes by Kitty Broman, who in addition to her leadership role hosted a daily TV show. One thing the book doesn’t do is get into too much detail about all of the various on-air personalities, and only mentions a few of them. One is Bill Rasmussen, who was the sports director at WWLP prior to founding ESPN.

As I do with all of the books I read, I like to give them to others. I am giving this to my friend Tom, as he grew up watching WWLP like myself, and lived near the access road to the mountain-top studios.

Have I convinced you to read this book? Have you read it? I welcome your thoughts in the comments to this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Goals by nature are complex. At least that’s how I see them. As they segue to an action plan to achieve them, they must be clear and not too wordy, yet not vague or they will lose their meaning. Often times goals are “boiled-down” to a phrase or even one word for marketing and promotional purposes as a simple rally cry to those who are a stakeholder to these goals.

In the book One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton and Jimmy Page (not the guitarist), they propose you simply have 1 word as an overall goal for yourself for a year. They present a rather simplistic yet thoughtful process by looking inward, opening yourself up to discovering the word, then applying it to your year.

As I read this several takeaways came to me, including:

• You need to find a process that works for you – The steps in this book may work for you, and also they may not. Sometimes it takes a book like this to help you though such a process.
• Divine intervention is not for everyone – The book is based on faith in God in order to open one’s self to ”receive” their word for the year. This may be a turn-off for some, perhaps those who do not believe in a supreme deity. That being said, if you are a spiritual person, you can still follow this process without acknowledging a god to open up and find your word.
• Maybe simple is all you need? – If you are typically someone who does not set goals, or are someone who belabors the process to do so, following a simple process in this short book may be exactly what you need.

As simple as the concept is for One Word, the book is as short. It was written to be read in less than an hour, and tells a good story on how the concept was formed, how it works and how it has been used by others. One Word was another book I owned and found when I moved – note there are more to come! I don’t recall the inspiration for getting it, but my guess it was its process meaning around goal-setting.

So I set a phrase and not a word

As I started 2015, I thought about this book that I had read a while back and decided to open up and see if I could come to a word to guide me through the year. As I reflected on where I was and what I was doing, what came to me was not 1 word but 3, and after trying to come up with a good 1 word for the 3, I decided to stick with the 3 – mix it up. As I am creeping up to my sixth decade on this planet, I often find myself getting a little stodgy and repetitive. I could be going to the same stores or reading the same blogs and sites or simply doing the same thing. Why not mix it up, expose myself to new things, foods, places, people, even if the change is slight. This way, I am making small, incremental changes in my life, which won’t seem as obvious while in the process.

For myself, I will use the hashtag #mixitup to mark things new and different for me.

As always, I welcome your thoughts on the concept of One Word and the book itself. Have your goals so far this year been a challenge and you’re looking for something new? Or have you followed One Word and chose your own? Please share in the comments to this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Is the work you do a vocation, career or simply a job?

This is the question I am asking in this quick poll. As I am reading the book 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal by Dan Miller, this question is the activity of day 6 of the 48, where one is supposed to discuss this with 2 people about what they do for work and if it is a vocation or their calling, part of the progression of their career path or if it is merely a job where they are collecting a paycheck.

I have decided to go wide with this query and am asking all readers of this post to answer this poll. In addition, I am interested in the discussion of why you made your selection and welcome your thoughts in the comments to this post. As the comments are moderated, you may respond anonymously, and providing you are not spamming the comments with ads for knock-off merchandise, I will post them.

Thank you in advance, and I am eager to see your votes as well as your comments as to if what you do for work is a vocation, career or job.

Please make your selection below - if you cannot see the poll question please answer the poll here.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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I was aware of the book Who Moved My Cheese? for some time, yet I had no idea what the story was about. When I found the book after moving, I decided to take it and give it a read. It was a short book yet it was packed with a powerful message to me.

Written by Dr. Spencer Johnson, the co-author of The One Minute Manager (yet another book I have not read, but I digress) Who Moved My Cheese? is a story of people telling the story and discussing “who moved my cheese?” and what they took away from it. When you read the story it's hard not to put yourself into the characters of the story, whether it’s those who are hearing the story or those who are in the story “who moved my cheese?” Interestingly, the discussion of the story takes place in Chicago.

After putting down the book, my takeaways were very obvious to me.

• Everything is in constant change – whether we realize it or not, things are always changing. This may be obvious for some things but for many things in our lives it probably isn't as obvious as others, yet we need to be aware of all change.
• Laugh at yourself – This is something I have always felt that I was really good at, but it's something that when you go down a certain path you may forget to do. By stepping back and taking yourself out of the situation, it will help you see things much clearer and allow you the opportunity to laugh at it a little bit.
• Be the “haw” – The character “Haw” in the story Who Moved My Cheese? is the hero, the one who decided to move on when things were bad. His line in the story about what you would do if you weren't afraid is something to take to heart.
• It's never too late to change – Even if things are very bad and you don't think there's an opportunity to change, there is a choice to make to remain where you are or get out and move on.

Granted this isn't the only book that has ever been written about picking up and moving on, but I think it tells it in a way that it realizes the struggles people have with just doing that and spells it out in a way that makes it easier for you to relate to it.

At 96 pages, Who Moved My Cheese? is an extremely quick read and I read it in about an hour. Though the book was originally published in 1998, it is a timeless story and very relevant today for what I'm doing and what other people I know are doing. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book. As I am done reading it, if you would like my copy please let me know and I'll share it with you.

I welcome your thoughts on the book Who Moved My Cheese? in the comments of this post. Was it a good story for you, or a silly read, or something else?

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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