Is Your Company in the InformationWeek 500?

Is your company an innovator?  Do you want to know how some of the leading companies are using IT to strategic benefit?
For the past 19 years, the InformationWeek 500 has tracked the technology practices of the nation’s most innovative companies and the rankings for 2007 just came out last week.  This is what IW says about [...]

First Commandment of Writing Requirements

As a follow-on to yesterday’s webcast on Finding Requirements, I am sharing a blog post I found on the pathfinder blog about writing technical requirements by Scott Witt.
Scott’s first commandment of “Thou Shall Always Address the Audience’s Needs” lays out 7 tips for writing requirements.

Eliminate jargon
Clearly organize
Be consistent
Eliminate buzzwords
Avoid clauses
Avoid passive voice
Use “must” not “shall” [...]

Professor Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

What would you say in your “last lecture”?
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university on September 18, 2007.   In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own [...]

What’s the Best Way to Learn?

This topic was prompted by a discussion with Ellen Gottesdiener who is one of the Catalyze leaders and founder of EBG Consulting.  Ellen’s company recently introduced a new eLearning course, Roadmap to Success: Foundation for Requirements and Development, to their suite of training offerings for business analysts.  This new module is an introductory fundamentals course [...]

Tom Peters Lives!

Who knew?
My work colleague was at a conference this week and the keynote speaker was Tom Peters, the uber-guru of management.  Twenty five years ago, Tom and his colleague Bob Waterman wrote the seminal book, In Search of Excellence.  I guess I hadn’t thought of Tom since reading In Search, but he is definitely alive [...]

Whatever It Takes

Ok, I’ll start with full disclosure.  This post has nothing to do with software design or definition.
Instead, this post is about a very interesting book that I am currently reading and one that I feel compelled to share with the Catalyze community.  And the title of this post is borrowed from the mission statement of Partners In [...]