Laura’s Winning Ideas

This has probably been circulating for awhile, but I just got it. A list of URLs gone awry and great examples of why we double check for double entendres.

1. ‘Who Represents’ is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is:
www.whorepresents.com

2. ‘Experts Exchange’ is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at:
www.expertsexchange.com

3. Looking for a great pen? Look no further than ‘Pen Island’. It can be found at:
www.penisland.net

4. Need a therapist? Try ‘Therapist Finder’ at:
www.therapistfinder.com

5. Then there’s the ‘Italian Power Generator’ company. Check it out at:
www.powergenitalia.com

6.’IP computer’ software, there’s always:
www.ip_anywhere.com

7. And the designers at ‘Speed of Art’ await you at their wacky Web site:
www.speedofart.com

Laura Ewing just showed me a new site to research federal contracts.

http://www.usaspending.gov

Very nice interface. I’ve played around with it a few minutes and easily found contracts for clients and their competitors, as well as which agencies are contracting.

Tuck this one in your bookmarks and backup your bookmarks!

Technorati Tags: proposal database,contracts database,competitor data

The CIO at Kimberly Clark is working to eradicate tech speak and requires every word of the department email missives to be found in Webster’s Dictionary. (What have we come to that this is revolutionary news?!?)

As reported in the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Blog this week, acronyms must be translated into something meaningful for the recipient.

The time it takes to write with clarity and full explanation, multiplies your effort.

Time saved by your readers X  Number of readers being addressed = Value of your time spent editing for clarity.

When sending a proposal, the importance of the clarity is multiplied by the dollars involved in your proposed contract.

He also uses the same template I teach for mass email. Begin the message with “ACTION NEEDED:” so the responsible parties know whether they are personally holding up progress or just being informed of progress. In the case of Kimberly Clark, they begin with: If you use this system (fill in specifics here), Please read on.

Vincent Wright posted a note about Scrum project management and pointed to this article about Scrum on Wikipedia. Next time you need to train a new person (on your team or interfacing with your team), this might be helpful.

Scrum is taken from a term in Rugby, a sport similar to Proposal writing.

A scrum project is organized into sprints, just as proposal teams organize around individual proposals.

Team members are divided into Pigs and Chickens:

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. However, while chickens make a contribution, pigs are fully committed.

Chickens include the SMEs, salespeople, management, technical staff and stakeholders in your organization. The pigs are the ones who must get the proposal out the door. Chickens can edit the “Product Backlog” (AKA the proposal storyboards) and provide input to pigs as requested. However, the Pigs are fully committed to the effort and will make the proposal happen.
At the daily status meetings, only pigs are allowed to speak, though chickens may attend. The daily meeting is “time boxed” to 15 minutes, and everyone arrives on time or suffers the team punishment. This meeting is held standing.

The Sprintmaster (aka proposal team leader/proposal manager/proposal coordinator) keeps a Burn Chart, detailing what remains to be done before the end of the sprint (proposal delivery).

Every “sprint” (proposal) is followed by a debrief meeting called a Sprint Retrospective.

When trying to explain what and how we work, having other examples is helpful.