hook for a huge number of projects. So, let’s look at what our capacity is.

a vendor for a $200,000 project to do customer data mining and another vendor to plug into all our POS systems to get sales data for customer analytics. “The first problem is that both projects violate the data privacy policy that we’ve given our customers,” John says. “We repeatedly promise that we will not share data with partners. Whether we

You’ve just described ‘technical debt’ that is not being paid down. It comes from taking shortcuts, which may make sense in the short-term. But like financial debt, the compounding interest costs grow over time. If an organization doesn’t pay down its technical debt, every calorie in the organization can be spent just paying interest, in the form

“So that’s what’s on the second slide, which shows what I believe are the more important company goals. I look at this slide every day.” Are we competitive? Understanding customer needs and wants: Do we know what to build? Product portfolio: Do we have the right products? R&D effectiveness: Can we build it effectively? Time to market: Can we ship

“In those moments, you wonder whether the problem is the economy, our strategy, our management team, you IT guys, or, quite frankly, maybe the entire problem is me. Those are the days I just want to retire.”

“Here are two slides I look at every day.”

“Some of the wisest auditors say that there are only three internal control objectives: to gain assurance for reliability of financial reporting, compliance with laws and regulations, and

them? Customer retention: Are we gaining or losing

When all you do is react, there’s not enough time to do the hard mental work of figuring out whether you can accept new work. So, more projects are crammed onto the plate, with fewer cycles available to each one, which means more bad multitasking, more escalations from poor code, which mean more shortcuts.