Alexander Obenauer: Things I'm working on lately. Earlier this year, I recreated the user environment found on the Canon Cat, a 1987 follow-up to the Macintosh by Jef Raskin. This was a really wild idea of personal computing: the entire OS’ user environment was, essentially, one long document. (more)

If you're digging-into, or generating, numbers (spreadsheet), you probably need a visual "interface" to them. Make a graph! (more)

aka Work In Process (inventory) (more)

improvement on roadmap, recognizing the the 3 time periods have very different appropriate levels of precision. (more)

Place/action to Focus your attention/effort, instead of drizzling BullShit. Bottleneck literally refers to the top narrow part of a bottle. In engineering, it refers to a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or small number of components or resources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottleneck (more)

prioritization model based on three-set measurements: Impact (outcome), Confidence (uncertainty), and Ease (cost) from Sean Ellis (more)

The mental practice of acknowledging the uncertainty/risk of every belief or decision or action. (more)

Creating multiple ideas (rule of three) for solving a problem, etc. (more)

James Ralph Beniger (December 16, 1946[1] – April 12, 2010) was an American historian and sociologist and Professor of Communications and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, particularly known for his early work on the history of quantitative graphics in statistics,[2][3] and his later work on the technological and economic origins of the information society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Beniger

Perceptual control theory (PCT) is a model of behavior based on the properties of negative feedback control loops. A control loop maintains a sensed variable at or near a reference value by means of the effects of its outputs upon that variable, as mediated by physical properties of the environment. In engineering control theory, reference values are set by a user outside the system. An example is a thermostat. In a living organism, reference values for controlled perceptual variables are endogenously maintained. Biological homeostasis and reflexes are simple, low-level examples. The discovery of mathematical principles of control introduced a way to model a negative feedback loop closed through the environment (circular causation), which spawned perceptual control theory. It differs fundamentally from some models in behavioral and cognitive psychology that model stimuli as causes of behavior (linear causation). PCT research is published in experimental psychology, neuroscience, ethology, anthropology, linguistics, sociology, robotics, developmental psychology, organizational psychology and management, and a number of other fields. PCT has been applied to design and administration of educational systems, and has led to a psychotherapy called the method of levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_control_theory (more)

A control loop is the fundamental building block of control systems in general and industrial control systems in particular.... There are two common classes of control loop: open loop and closed (feedback) loop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_loop

A couple related flavors: (more)

approach to optimizing product quality, cf quality assurance, Statistical Process Control (more)

Statistical process control (SPC) or statistical quality control (SQC) is the application of statistical methods to monitor and control the quality of a production process. This helps to ensure that the process operates efficiently, producing more specification-conforming products with less waste scrap. SPC can be applied to any process where the "conforming product" (product meeting specifications) output can be measured. Key tools used in SPC include run charts, control charts, a focus on continuous improvement, and the design of experiments. An example of a process where SPC is applied is manufacturing lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_process_control... see also XMR

Jon Udell is reading David Gelernter's Mirror Worlds and Albert Laszlo Barabasi's Linked. Terminology aside, what's most compelling here is the notion that these are universal properties of Network-s of all kinds: molecular, HyperText-ual, Social Network-s, Transportation. And further, that hubs - whether they are the Chicagos and Atlantas of air travel, or the Yahoos and Googles of the Web, or the Mavens and Connectors of Malcolm Gladwell's social universe - arise inevitably, and are sources of both immense power and frightening vulnerability... How do you gain control of this unpilotable airplane (metaphor for New Economy organizations)? Pervasive instrumentation, transparency, Distributed Computing, Loosely Coupled.

It's not the same for all of them. But the point is, despite all the business books (case study), most have just 1 Golden Goose (ok maybe 2): a key capability, or a key decision. (more)

person who does Systems Thinking (more)

There are 3 Games of Product Management, and each of these has variations based on the context. (more)

The Metagame, or game about the game, is any approach to a game that transcends or operates outside of the prescribed rules of the game; uses external factors to affect the game; or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Metagaming might also refer to a game which functions to create or modify the rules of a sub-game. Thus, we might play a metagame selecting which rules will apply during the play of the game itself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming See There are 3 Games of Product Management. (more)

person who does Product Management (more)