When asked to review something, I like to use a version of Brené Brown's question, "What does support look like?"
I can rubber-stamp, LGTM, proof-read, rip to shreds, etc. You tell me what you want.
Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
51–60 of 60 posts
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's bad but I consider doing this for code review sometimes.
This reminds me...many graphic designers knows to have a bad version of a design. What they do not expect is the customer picking that one. It explains some campaigns though
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#53As someone whose job includes big components of both technical work and project management, I can’t help but wonder:
How frequently am I shown ducks?
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's a really great way to put it, but also not something the majority of leaders (or people in general) are capable of. Nothing is ever perfect, everyone has a different opinion/view, at some point you need to wrap up a work product and move on. I found with a former manager the creation of project plans was absolutely hell because of this. Arguably project plans are not something directly deliverable to a…
>>Don Quixote'ing I realize there is no way to say this without sounding like an absolute fucking dork, and this may be a syntaxial choice you're making, but the phrase is "tilting at windmills". I regularly say "irregardlessly" because it's fun and I know better and if that's what you're doing here I love it and it's amazing, but if not you've got a new phrase in your kit.
> I realize there is no way to say this without sounding like an absolute fucking dork
I don't think you needed this caveat. I appreciated being reminded of the phrase.
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#55I remember an interview from Soviet cinema director Georgii Daneliya, mentioning that to make their movie pass the approval committee intact (what you'd call "censorship"), they'd make absurd and provocative "sacrifice" episodes (like "sacrifice bolts"). The episodes were fought over and finally seceded to the committee, but the rest of the film went into the theaters. (Movies had to pass two such committees: one bef…
I think by scenario you mean “script” (that’s the typical way to say it in English).
I don't know if that's necessarily what was meant. But I could easily envision needing to even get the idea (scenario) approved before even being allowed to actually write a full script.
Keep in mind, just producing certain written works was justification enough to be killed.
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#56It would have been better with the duck left in the game. "Why is there a duck there?" -> "Great story, no one on the team was the sort that bikesheds things" -> "omg, your team was the luckiest like ever!"
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things change all the time. People, including managers, are human and specs aren't something that always can be "carved in stone" in advance and carried out to perfection. There certainly are pathological situations where people really do need to leave a mark and that's why "the duck" technique that Rachel described works. This pops up in presentations too. Sometimes you know in advance that your presentation is goin…
A tip for presentations: in presentation mode in both Powerpoint and Slides, if you type the slide number and press enter, the presentation will jump to that slide. If you have notes about which auxiliary slide is relevant to which persnickety comment/topic, you can seamlessly warp to it and it hits harder/makes you look more prepared/polished than a bunch of page up/down and "I know it's here somewhere" filler speec…
I didn't know PowerPoint allows you to navigate that way. I've always used either hyperlinked text or little navigation icons in a corner of the slide to quickly navigate to the relevant back up slides.
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#58I remember an interview from Soviet cinema director Georgii Daneliya, mentioning that to make their movie pass the approval committee intact (what you'd call "censorship"), they'd make absurd and provocative "sacrifice" episodes (like "sacrifice bolts"). The episodes were fought over and finally seceded to the committee, but the rest of the film went into the theaters. (Movies had to pass two such committees: one bef…
I think by scenario you mean “script” (that’s the typical way to say it in English).
oh, yes, script. False friends in translation.
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think by scenario you mean “script” (that’s the typical way to say it in English).
I don't know if that's necessarily what was meant. But I could easily envision needing to even get the idea (scenario) approved before even being allowed to actually write a full script. Keep in mind, just producing certain written works was justification enough to be killed.
That was the script. Russian word for script is "scenariy", which is why I got confused.
Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)
#60I used to live in Montreal. Cabs there need to get a safety inspection like every 6 months. Talking to some cab drivers there, many of them remarked that the people doing the safety exam -had- to find something. Your car could have been fresh from the mechanic, they’d find something to complain about. So, starting about 6 weeks out from their next safety, if something went wrong but the car was still drivable, they w…
One of my earliest bosses was the main web developer for a telco's marketing department. He would get everything working and ready the way that it needed to be, then prior to showing it to marketing would change something to be clearly wrong. In my example, he just put a red line down the middle of one section that looked out of place. Marketing would review it and say, "Everything looks good, let's just change that…
"The problem was that the women who were making the cakes didn't feel emotionally invested enough just adding water, he said. Eggs would make it feel more like baking. In later years, many would portray this as a pivotal moment in the history of cake mixes, the inflection point of a dramatic upward curve."
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171027-the-magic-cakes-...