Tag Archives: Goals
“The act of measuring disturbs the system and changes its state.” is a quote attributed to Werner Heisenberg. While I am uncertain about whether Heisenberg ever uttered those exact words, I am certain that the quote “What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed” is a management adage that gets a lot of negative publicity, deservedly so.
Metrics Not Considered Harmful
Yet, metrics can be helpful. MariaDB Foundation is far from overmeasuring pointy-haired-boss numbers, and in February, we made an attempt at systematically creating a meaningful metric that is easy to calculate.
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Continue reading “This month in MariaDB Foundation: Feb 2025”
Focus, focus, focus! That’s the mantra of any successful organisation. With great input from our Board, we’ve managed to condense our strategic planning for 2025 into six goals.
Refiguring the process – from descriptive to prescriptive
Our goal setting started from mapping out our activities 2024. I asked myself: “How can we describe what we do on one page?”. There were 38 activities – think “Scrum Epics” – in 6 areas.
Guess what? That’s too many. No Board member is interested in that level of detail. Oh well, I should have known.
Back to the drawing board.
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Continue reading “This month in MariaDB Foundation: Jan 2025”
When setting long-term goals, striking the right balance is difficult: Not too generic (fluffy), not too specific (micromanagement). Not too few (lack of challenges), not too many (overwhelming). Consistently focusing on core values, while adapting to changes in the environment.
MariaDB Foundation’s internal goal setting process for 2023 seems to be working out well – and some lessons learned may be of interest even to our community.
The most important lesson learned is about our half-year review.
Adverse conditions when planning 2023
We set our 2023 yearly goals in December, with an emphasis on the first half of the year.
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Continue reading “On yearly goals, plc woes and habits at MariaDB Foundation”
MariaDB Foundation faces an unusual world, just like anyone else in these Corona times. Or perhaps, not quite. Here are some ideas for how to cope with a world inhibiting travel and social contact as we know it, from someone who has worked from home for 20 years, with colleagues also working from home.
First, stay upbeat. Humans are social animals, and we live off interactions with others. But Corona just dictates what type of social interactions we can have. It doesn’t inhibit social contact.
Second, stay connected.
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