The Lighthouse project is doing some really nice work displaying software development processes across multiple monitors. They’re using Google maps, 3D and other location oriented approaches to create new kinds of developer tools. Now they’re integrating these tools with IBM Jazz. Sweet.

I’ve long viewed screen real estate as a huge constraint to be worked around. The tasks and ideas in my mind just don’t fit on a single screen. It’s rare for me to use just a single screen or even a single computer unless it’s my laptop outside of my office. Most of the time I’m using 2-3 machines and lately more and more that ratchets up to 4-5. Typically one of the machines has a dual display so at any given time I have 3-6 screens visible.

The volume of information flowing through IBM Jazz or any development environment doesn’t fit on a single screen so it’s a huge productivity drain to constantly search for, then minimize and maximize windows. Virtual desktops help, but then windows are out of sight.

In an attempt to broaden the awareness and appeal of it’s Jazz collaboration software, IBM is considering putting parts of it open source, although one source claims not the parts that really matter. It’s really hard to build a following around a closed platform these days as CNET’s Matt Asay points out.

Although Wal-Mart’s supply chain driven vision of RFID isn’t evolving quite as planned

That’s not stopping people from coming up with useful implementations for the tiny tags

Futurismic: RFID - bad for businesses, but great for beaches

For all of it’s resources, Wal-Mart apparently doesn’t have the rhythmeering or even engineering systems expertise to effectively help the ecosystem grow. Understanding the role of participants would allow Wal-Mart to have a greater influence by interacting with companies outside of their immediate supply chain who can contribute to the health of the ecosystem. The RFID ecosystem is much larger than Wal-Mart or the DOD.

Although compliance with Wal-Mart, the DOD, and the Metro Group (in Europe) is still the driving force behind RFID usage, closed-looped applications such as tracking at the pallet, case and item levels is gaining. “The business case and value proposition for RFID is being realized across many types of organizations.”

Industry Week

“The RFID market is poised for stronger growth during 2007 and 2008 due to end users’ increased acceptance of RFID as a valuable tool to increase efficiency in a number of applications,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Brendon Ouimette. “Asset management, inventory management, and work in process visibility applications will require the type of data management capabilities that RFID middleware provides.

Business Intelligence Network

From Jazz Impact, I found this link:

Leading a company is often compared to conducting an orchestra. But organizing a jazz band may be a more appropriate analogy. That’s because business leaders increasingly want to set free the creative juices of individuality while maintaining the discipline to make music, not noise. USA TODAY’s Del Jones went to Wynton Marsalis, 45, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, who was named one of America’s Best Leaders in 2006 by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and U.S. News & World Report.

USAToday: Hot Corporations know how to swing

 

In addtion to an interesting interview, the piece also has several excellent tips from Marsalis:

• Everything in jazz and business starts with integrity. Listen to others. Respect them. Build trust.
• Groups who work together “swing.” They believe “we” is more important than “me,” and by doing so, absorb mistakes.
• You can be creative inside or outside of tradition. Inside, you reinvigorate. Outside, you counter-state.
• Creative people dare to be laughed at. They don’t act like what they are. They be what they are.
• Embrace opposites. They are, in fact, the same.

Update: see also Rhythms In Business

In a rapidly changing marketplace, customers aren’t always able to articulate clearly their wants and needs; even when they can, you may not have time to analyze their input and then design and offer a solution. Even with the best strategic planning and business intelligence, competitors can appear on the scene at any time and disruptive technologies can surface. Sustaining success is an open-ended process, not a project to be completed. To maintain your success, you need to interpret the participants and conditions of the ecosystem around you.

The manager of the interpretive organization needs to act less like an engineer and more like the leader of a jazz combo. Diverse components need to be brought together – musicians, instruments, solos, themes, tempos, an audience – but their roles and their relationships are changing all the time. The goal is not to arrive at a fixed and final shape, but to channel the work in a way that both influences and fulfills the listener’s – the customer’s expectations. The interpretive manager, unlike the analytical manager, embraces ambiguity and improvisation as essential to innovation. She seeks openings, not endings.

Interpretive Management
Harvard Business Review March-April 1998

Two keys to interpreting are to be able to identify and optimize critical transitions and to identify and synchronize with the rhythms of your business.
Transitions

The points at which businesses move from one thing – product, season, advertising campaign, development project – to another are incredibly complex junctures. They typically involve large numbers of people who either never work together or, perhaps worse, have worked together but not always cooperatively. Because of their relative infrequency (and often their lack of regularity or periodicity), managers have little or no training to deal with them and fewer opportunities to learn from experience how to manage them. Communication falters. Missteps occur.

In a March-April 1998 article from Harvard Business Review, the effect of handling a transition well or poorly was summed up nicely:

When transitions are poor, businesses lose position, stumble, and fall behind. In contrast, companies that manage by time pacing learn to choreograph important transitions - and to shorten the time it takes to execute them.

Dealilng with transitions benefits greatly from certain aspects of the jazz ensemble paradigm, as that same article continues:

The best transitions do more than simply take a company from point A to point B. Managers can actually use these transitions to learn, reflect, change direction, and accomplish other goals.
Harvard Business Review March-April 1998
Time Pacing: Competing In Markets That Won’t Stand Still

Taken from Jazz and the Future of Global E-Commerce

See also recent posts - Business Mesh on my other blog and the Simulations Factor here.