Declan Chellar

Here is a fabulous animation from RSA Animate, illustrating a talk by author Barbara Ehrenreich on how positive thinking can be delusional and harmful. She basically says what I said in “Reality check“, but with more eloquence and concrete examples. I dislike her already. Applause to the cartoonist also. Thanks to my friend Rowan Manahan [...]

I am a great believer in facing up to reality, regardless of the pain involved. I don’t know whether it is my experience as a senior business analyst or my character or both that causes me to step in from time to time and say: “Stop! Time for a reality check!” How many times has [...]

A former colleague posted that question in Facebook today. My response was: Because many people care more about leaving their stamp than about achieving the strategic goal. “I succeeded even though we failed” sounds better to such people than “We succeeded”. This is also true on integration projects where there are multiple suppliers. When we [...]

When we are involved in producing a piece of software, it’s easy to forget that we are not simply building a product: we are implementing a change in the way a company operates. Change is unnerving. We all know that. I know it particularly because I started losing my hair when I was eighteen. Changes [...]

Have you heard the term “helicopter parent“? Well, I try not to be a “helicopter leader” (although I am sure I don’t always succeed). When mentoring a team of people, it can be tempting to do things for them if they aren’t getting things perfectly right, but that can distract you from your job as [...]