Sublime

Revisit Drucker—WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS MANAGED Measure compulsively, for as Peter Drucker stated, What gets measured gets managed. Useful metrics to track, besides the usual operational stats, include CPO (“Cost-Per-Order,” which includes advertising, fulfillment and expected returns, chargebacks, and bad debt), ad allowable (the maximum you can s

what strategy is really all about: changing current methods of operating in order to render more value by existing partners on existing services to existing market segments.

FIGURE 2–1 Spectrum of Practice

The dilemma is a cruel one. For efficiency and conceptual integrity, one prefers a few good minds doing design and construction. Yet for large systems one wants a way to bring considerable manpower to bear, so that the product can make a timely appearance. How can these two needs be reconciled? Mills's Proposal A proposal by Harlan Mills offers a f

Free up at least 20% of management’s time to think. This is not a vague wish—it is mandatory to have even the remotest chance of improving multi-project management.

See Rob Newbold, Project Management in the Fast Lane (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998); Billion Dollar Solution (Lake Ridge, VA: ProChain Solutions, Inc., 2008); and Andreas Scherer, Be Fast or Be Gone (Lake Ridge, VA: ProChain Solutions, Inc., 2001).

In the short term (e.g., over the next four to six weeks), do the project requirements across all projects show any overloading of the resources I am responsible for? How much overloading is there (i.e., are they loaded to 125%, 150%)?