Thomas Koeppen Blog

Jeremiah Owyang (a web strategist, one of the leading experts on social media) explains Open Social for executives: Using mini-applications, companies can now efficiently extend their website experience to existing communities on popular social networks Read more: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/02/explaining-opensocial-to-your-executives/ In parallel it is worth reading a ebook by Daren Barefoot and Julie Szabo: “Become a Social [...]

News Item edited by Thomas Koeppen Many companies have historically utilized transactional-based business strategies and have established a litany of processes to ensure their success. These companies do not encourage innovation and choose to rely on processes as a highly controlled mechanism to address predefined problems. In these environments, the concept of employee ownership rarely [...]

News Item added by Thomas Koeppen i found an fantastic description of Marc Andreessen (Founder of Ning – the social network and co-author of Mosaic – the browser) on hiring people: First, drive. I define drive as self-motivation – people who will walk right through brick walls, on their own power, without having to be [...]

You tell me, i forget. You teach me, i remember. You involve me, i learn. Benjamin Franklin.

The difference between a good engineer and a great one has little to do with technical skill, but a lot to do with all the other stuff.

It’s easy for IT managers to get bogged down in day-to-day activities and lose sight of the bigger picture of leading their staff. Whether you’re a seasoned pro, or new to the game, the following tips will help you effectively manage your team. 1. Spend time (and money) developing your people IT is a constantly [...]

I found a nice description from http://www.agileadvice.com/ : “A leader is a person who assists a group of people become a self-organizing, self-managing and self-sustaining team so that he/she no longer has to be a leader for that group.” This is an interesting definition in contrast to the wikipedia one: House defines “leadership” organizationally and [...]

Scott Ambler’s latest DDJ article covers a topic that is important for us: Pitching Agile to Senior Management – This inability to articulate to senior management why they should adopt agile techniques is ironic considering our focus on communication. Ambler’s experience is that management is often very willing to become more agile if you’re able [...]

There are many different processes that fit under the Agile umbrella and almost every company implements them differently. The idealistic phase is over, and teams are quite practical in the ways in which they adopt and adapt Agile processes. But many are overwhelmed by the tasks of selecting specific practices, fitting them with legacy processes, [...]

Nichts ist so beständig wie der Wandel. Veränderungen sind zum permanenten Begleiter im Wirtschaftsleben geworden: Strategiewechsel, Restrukturierungen, Unternehmenszusammenschlüsse und externe Einflüsse verlangen von Unternehmen, sich zu verändern – und von Mitarbeitern ebenfalls. Der Sozialwissenschaftler Lewin teilt einen erfolgreichen Veränderungsprozess in 3 Phasen ein: PHASE 1: Auftauen (unfreeze): Zu Beginn eines jeden Veränderungsprozesses müssen Widerstände gegen [...]