Archive for May, 2012

An early observation on multitasking

Posted on May 25th, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

While browsing a forgotten bookshelf I found myself leafing through an old volume called “The scientist in action – a scientific study of his methods”, by one William H. George, a Physics professor from Sheffield. This book had been published in 1938 by Emerson Books, NY. And as I flipped the pages I happened to notice the following statement: It is one of the properties of man that if he tries to give attention to many things at once he becomes confused. Confusion of thought is a hindrance to scientific research… I have no idea who Mr. George was, but.. Read more

How to make programmers efficient

Posted on May 6th, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

I was talking to a manager of IT systems in a financial organization, and she told me of an impressive step she’d taken to improve effectiveness. She had a group of programmers working for her, and they were suffering – as do we all – from frequent interruptions. So she removed the (landline) telephones from their rooms! She also made it known that these people were not to be interrupted by other means, and thereby allowed them to do what they were there for – write code. The results were very evident: efficiency in this team had visibly improved relative.. Read more