Monday 4 June 2007

Why 5 Why's?

Well, wasn't this a long time in the making, I created this Blogspot account in May '06 and here I am in June '07 starting to write. My biggest consideration was working out the approach/angle I was going to take. So here I am finally launching 5 Why's, a blog that I hope can provide an avenue for me to share some of my perspective on life as a professional IT manager, and provide you with some of the tools and techniques that I use to get me by.

So Why "5 Why's"? The response to this question in the simplest form is that I solve problems for a living and "5 Why's" seemed to be quite a relevant problem solving technique. Wikepedia (5 Whys), actually points to the formal origin of this technique, were as I like to identify it as one of the first techniques we learn and the first we forget.

Who out there has been questioned by a 5 year old kid? What is it they ask? WHY? and they'll ask it time and time again. As a busy adult we may dismiss this questioning or if we are aware of it we may enjoy teasing the kid. But I have to ask, have you ever used it in your adult professional life? It can be quite an effective way of getting to the root cause of a problem.

Why's aside, it is my hope that I can, via this blog, provide an outlet for me to share some of my experiences and approaches I have used to solve everyday problems. This may range from creating and communicating direction for my team, to coaching, career development or on a larger scale dealing with a project off the rails or sorting out performance issues within a high pressure environment.

All of this will be based upon pragmatic application of techniques I have obtained through the professional training provided by my company, ITIL, PRINCE2 and graduate studies at MGSM. The content will include articles on things such as "Dancing with Dilbert", How to improve project success and creating a Mandate. It is also my intention to provide reviews of books I use and their applicability to your work, and the tools or techniques that I find useful in my day to day job.

My personal reason for doing this? To simply try and give something back, to a broader community. I hope you find something useful here over the coming months. Remember I am new to this, learning constantly and would love your feedback as I go along.

Cheers

Andrew

1 comment:

  1. Great to meet you at Web 2.0 in Australia today. Good luck with the blog!

    ReplyDelete