Life-in-Progress

Life is more than a day job.

We Never Called it “Cyber Monday”

Posted by Alora Posted on Dec - 02 - 2009

I’ve been feeling nostalgic this week. After so many years in ecommerce, supporting catalogers and retailers whose year entirely revolved around the Christmas season, I am almost at a loss for what to do if I’m not running around putting out fires from Thanksgiving weekend up until the week before Christmas. Strange as it seems  [ Read More ]

Writing Requirements – What vs. How

Posted by Alora Posted on Sep - 15 - 2009

It’s been a long time since I’ve written much about my long-standing discipline. As I’ve been focusing more and more of my energies on entrepreneurial endeavors, the details of project management have not been forefront on my mind. That recently changed, however, thanks to a client project. In the development of a new startup, a  [ Read More ]

Categories: Career & Professional

The former CMO of Jive Software, Sam Lawrence, spoke to a crowded room at Interactive Austin this morning. His message was on the lessons needed to specifically apply in order to make social media work in your business. How We Say What We Say One of the challenges social media evangelists face is based on  [ Read More ]

20/20 Hindsight – Getting Your Start in a Startup

Posted by Alora Posted on Apr - 23 - 2009

People who did not meet me until at or around my 25th birthday would never believe it, but in school, I was the Queen of Slackers. Truly. School was too easy, too routine and I spent too long doing it to be able to breath new life into the experience. I could dodge classes, do  [ Read More ]

Why Agile Isn't Just for Development

Posted by Alora Posted on Apr - 21 - 2009

It’s been years since the evangelism for Agile development started truly gaining momentum. Super sexy buzzphrases phrases like “reduce time to market,” “improved ROI,” and “lower development costs” have all been invoked to support the case for adopting an Agile methodology over the old-school Waterfall approach. The fact is, most experienced professionals have lived through  [ Read More ]

Three Questions to Ask (& Answer!) Before Starting a Customer Blog

Posted by Alora Posted on Mar - 05 - 2009

In a recent conversation with a friend, we were discussing corporate blogging efforts to engage existing customers. After reading Joshua-Michele Ross‘ post recently, on the Wells Fargo/Wachovia merger blog, I was excited to see yet one more company prepare to engage customers in this forum. That is, until we started talking in more detail. It  [ Read More ]

Guest Post: Response to "Winners and Windmills"

Posted by Alora Posted on Mar - 03 - 2009

After writing my post last week, Winners and Windmills, I asked my friend, the lovely and talented Tiffany Miley-Parks if she would be willing to write a follow-up piece that addresses what happens when “passion and skill” are not longer aligned with the “opportunity and circumstance” that make a work environment exciting. She graciously complied  [ Read More ]

Time Management & New Projects

Posted by Alora Posted on Feb - 12 - 2009

Well, things have been crazy as I’ve been learning the ropes for my new roles: Principal & Co-Founder of The Indigo Heron Group, Inc. and Managing Editor of Social Computing Magazine. Lots to learn and lots to do, much of which has taken it’s toll on my blogging efforts. I’m working on some new time  [ Read More ]

Sneaking Web 2.0 in the Back Door

Posted by Alora Posted on Feb - 06 - 2009

This post was originally written for and published on Social Computing Magazine. Those of us in the Web 2.0 space who come from a technology background are often a little stunned when we discover that it is frequently our IT cohorts who pose some of the biggest obstacles to prospective enterprise implementations. After all, wouldn’t  [ Read More ]

Breaking into Project Management

Posted by Alora Posted on Jan - 13 - 2009

One of the questions I am most frequently asked is, “What do I need to do to make a career change into project management?” That question sometimes comes from people in similar or related fields, like IT Management, or from fields you might not normally expect, like teaching. Most often, though, this question is posed  [ Read More ]

Categories: Career & Professional

Why I Love Project Management

Posted by Alora Posted on Jan - 09 - 2009

Throughout my career I have held roles with all kinds of titles, but in the end, at my core, I am a project manager. That is how I see myself and how I tend to identify, no matter what my formal title. And it’s for a very, very simple reason: there is one constant in  [ Read More ]

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Project Managers!

Posted by Alora Posted on Jan - 06 - 2009

As I look at job postings on Dice and Monster, I have been noticing a disturbing, yet unsurprising, trend emerge: an increase in the number of employers seeking candidates who can function as both project managers and development leads on projects. Naturally, difficult economic conditions demand a re-evaluation of spending habits. And, in cases where  [ Read More ]