Another great Kanban introduction

Got a tip from Joakim Sundén about an article that introduces Kanban in a great way. Here you are.

I don’t know if I got it better this time because I already knew about Kanban but it really got to me in a practical way by reading this.

I also loved some details in the presentation – just check the “Your estimated waiting time” –boxes in this picture:

Thank you Jeff.

Marcus and Mac: my clumsy fingers

As readers of this blog might have noticed I have not only switched to Mac (Book Pro) but also have done so after a long while on the PC-side of things.

I am not sure that it has anything to do with this but the wonderful touch pad on my Mac Book and I don’t click (no pun intended). I may also have to do with lacking fine motorics…  but I hope not.

One of my most trusted Mac-source have supplied me with this video. Thanks Magnus.

Import Outlook contacts to Mac Address Book – for free

OK – I know that a lot of stuff has been written on this. But most of these doesn’t really cut what I want. Mainly for two reasons:

• Either you could export your contacts to CSV (comma separated text format). This causes loss of non-text data such as images etc.
• There are some really good (I presume?) tools for this. But they all cost money… Some of the cost a lot. $49 for Outlook Contacts Exporter. My solution is free.

Don’t bother about that. Here is how you do it easily and absolutely free.

1. Open Outlook (I’m using 2007) and go to Contacts.
2. Mark them all, right-click and go “Send as Business Card”. This will attach all the marked contacts to a mail.
3. Send the mail to a mailbox that your Mac can read.
4. Open the mail and save all contacts (Save->All) to the hard drive of the Mac
5. Use Finder to open the folder where you have stored the cards.
6. Now drag them into Address Book 

It’s a bit verbose, especially if you have many contacts. I had 238 and it took quite some time to send that mail… but hey free is free, isn’t it.

Oh yeah – for extra credits with synch-junkies like me – go to Address Book and Settings->Account and check the Synch with Google-checkbox to get this into the cloud

Getting to the root of all things bad

Last week on the Kanban course we brushed on Root-Cause analysis several times. It is really a great tool for getting to the “root of all evil” if you like, or in any case the problem.

Although the base concepts are quite easy to grasp some guidance and best practices is always a good way to get you started. Mr Kniberg has done it again and serves us a great article that introduces the subject, with a humorous twist.

Thanks Henrik!