Looks like success.

Over the last few months TaskClerk has been downloaded well over 300 times from software sites all over the world. I thought I would note down its progress to help me when I reminisce one day. Some facts about the TaskClerk web site.

• 46 web pages on the site: Target for next year this time 150
• 2287 visits: Target for next year this time 10000
• 8,425 page views: Target for next year this time 50000
• 411 cities: Target for next year this time 1000
• 315 downloads: Target for next year this time 2000
• 10 comments by community: Target for next year this time 500

The only one that I think will be a stretch is the “comments by community”, the product does not provoke a reaction that warrants contacting the developers, most of us just don’t behave that way – so thanks to those who do comment, you fundamentally change the shape of the applications you comment on for the better.

Strategy as a process

My next course is Strategy and this diagram best portrays "strategy as a process" and the fundamental building blocks I will have to understand for the exam in October!




This is going to be hard work! One aspect that I wrestled with during the tutorial today was operational and strategic thinking. Sometimes I have mistaken my operational thinking as a type of stategy.
"Operational thinking relates to those activities or sets of activities that characterise the internal functioning of an organisation on a day-to-day basis. Examples of such activities include procedures to control quality of input and output, systems for handling customer complaints, techniques for minimising costs or cycle time, systems for managing recruitment or performance-related rewards and so on"
"Strategic thinking, by contrast, considers the performance of such systems and activities in their entirety." - OU Business School, What is Strategy, pg18

The effects of multitasking someones time.

Here is the basic effect of multitasking someones time, all but the last work stream is late. This concept does not take into account the increased marshaling between task types so this means the last work stream is also invariably late.



The top row shows 3 plans following a sequential pattern, the second row shows an interleaved pattern and P1b (the end of P1) completes the same time as the original P2 plan etc.

New Version of TaskClerk

A new version of TaskClerk has been shipped. Version 1.0.1.104 contains a new iCal exporter that can be used to add calendar information to both Outlook and Google calendar.