Brick wall © Les ChatfieldBrick wall © Les ChatfieldWhy are Projects so hard? Why do we fail here so often, even in workplaces featuring thorough planning and highly disciplined execution?

We do not fail despite, but because of these. We believe that turning a project into a success is like baking a pizza, while in fact, it resembles much more creating a pizza recipe.

Why? In our projects, we're not into producing identical results from identical ingredients. Every project is unique - it is like research & development, not like production. In R & D, diversity of results is what we strive for. In production, diversity is our worst enemy. We should be aware of this, however, we're making the same 4 mistakes, over and over again:  » Read more


«Vieanna» © Ian Woods«Vieanna» © Ian WoodsHere's a disclaimer: I wrote this posting because I'm fed up with spammers, telemarketers and nosy companies that try to squeeze out each and every bit of information they can get from me, be it for resale, preparing unsolicited phone calls or mailing me their boring newsletters.

This article is for you if you feel the same. If you're looking for support in becoming Mr Fraud, please go away. And when you've read this posting, stay aware that everything mentioned here is available to everybody, and there is always somebody who may or even will try to use it against you. I recommend visiting the Digital Identity Forum for more thorough discussions of identity issues that go beyond practical aspects.

The fifth part of this mini series on protecting your inbox shows you how to maintain temporary inboxes that yo can dispose of at any time, whenever they start getting abused.  » Read more


Wikipedia summarizes the Pareto Principle like this:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes.

To some people, this seems to suggest:

20% efforts => 80, 90, 99% results! WOW!

It is easy to fool yourself into believing all that matters were those 20%. Once you believe that, however, the Pareto Principle becomes kind of a voodoo ritual:  » Read more