Monthly Archives: October 2010

The reason I left my previous job to work at the SEI was the chance to work with Watts Humphrey. Watts literally wrote the book on personal process and discipline. Take responsibility and ownership of your work. Approach your work … Continue reading →

This chapter of Invisible Gorilla discusses what we might call “jumping to conclusions”. A jump might lead to an incorrect assessment of a root cause,  an ineffective remedy, or the adoption of an ineffective process The authors provide three sources … Continue reading →

The Invisible Gorilla refers to “Illusions”,  which are familiar to anyone also familiar with  the Kahneman and Tversky work on cognitive biases.   This is a very good popularization of the concepts. The illusions they address are the illusions of Knowledge, … Continue reading →

From The Invisible Gorilla, the chapter “Should you be more like a Weather Forecaster or a Hedge Fund Manager?” is about the illusion of knowledge. We often think we know why something works but if we were to test ourselves, … Continue reading →

Today, Glen Alleman posts about dealing with uncertainty in projects. http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/10/uncertainty.html I’m never disappointed in Glen’s no nonsense approach, uncertainty is a fact, adults deal with it.  But I want to make a separate related point. Glen writes, “As well, … Continue reading →

Many of you know that even simple habits with known benefits such as handwashing are not followed as often as we would like to think.  Various studies hand washing studies reach different results but none of them are encouraging.  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/10347.php,  … Continue reading →

The short, and flip,  answer is as long as it needs to be, but no longer and as short as you can make it, but no shorter.  However, I like to keep it to a page so that it is … Continue reading →

Hi, I’m Bill Nichols and I work with the TSP team at SEI. This blog is devoted to doing things right. We work with primarily with developing software, but also systems and services.  In each of these, doing things right … Continue reading →