Steve Pieczko

Back in my younger days, I could run a sub seven-minute mile. When I heard about somebody running a five-minute mile, I thought "now that's really fast." Today, the world record for the mile run is 3:43:13, set in 1999 by Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco. In the '80s, IT projects felt like they moved at the pace of an eight-minute mile. We took the time to write detailed requirements, detailed design documents, thorough project plans, test plans, you name it. If someone had a new idea or a new process on how to "do it right," it was implemented. I recall hour-long meetings on ways to improve processes on projects and conversations around what wasn't being documented that needed to be documented in case somebody asked the question "where's that documented?" We even took the time to write detailed communication plans, which is something that I haven't seen in a while.... (more)

Who Lowered This Bar and Why Can’t I Raise It?

One day while I was having dinner with my family, I asked my 11-year-old son, "Who is your favorite hero?" He quickly rattled off a number of baseball players on the Chicago Cubs and then asked "Hey dad who's your favorite hero?" I replied; "Dave Duffield." As you might guess, his reaction was "Who's Dave Duffield?" Not expecting him to know who Dave Duffield is, I said: "Dave Duffield is an important person in the business world. He took a small software company, PeopleSoft, and grew it into a huge business that frustrated his competitors so much they acquired his company. He i... (more)