Writings for CS247G, cs377G are all here Mechanics of Magic

Jim asks: How do you account for personality (or do you?) in leading and participating in teams? Christina Answers: Those darn humans! Seriously, one of the bigger mistakes managers is treating people as if they were interchangeable for any given role on any team. …

Hello readers! I’m going to try out a new series to build up my writing muscle. Do you have a question about OKRs, empowered teams, visual thinking or other things I know about? Ask in the comments! Question: If you’re measuring the KRs regularly (i.e. multiple times a week) and…

I made this for my students, but I think some other folks may benefit. Early Research Baseline Study A baseline study is an analysis of the current situation to identify the starting points for a programme or project. It looks at what information must be considered and analyzed to establish a baseline or…

And can you? They look simple, but looks deceive. — There is a concept I call drift. Drift means that a process has drifted away from the original framing. It happened to Agile. What started as a simple idea that people should work collaboratively and iteratively became people policing each other on the True Agile Way: “this is how to…

People Vary, Teams Vary, Goals Vary — I’ve been writing about Objectives and Key Results for about ten years. The mistakes companies make have been fairly typical most of that time: Sandbagging, Overreaching, Set and Forget… until recently. Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed managers are trying to give every one and every group their…

Beyond the Usual OKR approach — Since I first started writing about OKRs seven years ago, I have had a lot of companies reach out to me for advice. OKRs were originally envisioned to create focus on things that are important but not (yet) urgent. OKRs act as an accelerant on progress toward strategic efforts.

CS247g: Introduction to Game Design — Design is a very ancient practice, but graphic design really found its core principles post World War One. Games are also very ancient but video games are still finding their feet. I think graphic design has a few things to teach people who make games, so here are the big…