Sarquol Limited

I was recently reading various articles about the use of “Evidence” in Management. The basic idea is that it is all too easy to start management initiatives based on a prejudice of what is going on. The result can be that inappropriate action on a situation. An example would be if a manager were to believe that  his team were unproductive and needed extra motivation there are actions that might be taken to improve motivation, or apply control to demand more output. The reality of the situation might be very different, with the individuals motivated and wanting to produce more – but being hampered by an inability to work effectively in the environment. The appropriate actions here would be quite different, and action on the perceived problem would have no effect. It could even make it worse. Worse still, the problem might be that the team are productive but too much is expected of them for what is achievable in the situation.

 What solution is proposed? Continue reading ‘Evidence in Management and IT’ »

How often do you end up looking at one problem, and find that to solve it you have to solve all the others that it is interconnected with at the same time? One of the reasons I have found dealing with performance problems interesting over time is that they tend to be like this. It is only relatively recently, however, that I have come across the idea that this is a general class of management problem that occurs in business.  They have been studied under various titles (e.g “wicked” problems), but the common feature is complexity and an inability to have a single easy solution. Continue reading ‘Messy problems and solutions’ »

As a professional I find that I should do more networking than I do. I’m sure I’m not the only one in this situation. As such the following article may be of interest:

10 Questions for Effective Networking

http://www.success121.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45&Itemid=34

The article is written by a “professional coach” who discusses the benefits of value-based questioning when networking. It seems a better approach than the standard sales-lead approach, and may be useful in breaking the ice with potential clients for the future. I found it interesting, see if you do.

If you do not already have a performance testing tool and are doing HTTP or HTTPS development then I would recommend that you look at OpenSTA. The tool is open source, and so the only up front cost involved is the time it takes to learn the interface and produce scripts. It isn’t the only open source load testing tool out there, but it has a strong combination of simplicity of use and scripting flexibility. Continue reading ‘Archive Post: OpenSTA: A high quality load test tool without excessive cost’ »