Scott J. Pearson

Coaching for Performance: The Principles & Practice of Coaching & Leadership

By Scott J. Pearson | August 18, 2024September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

The field of workplace management has moved, in recent decades, from just being about organizing people for financial profits to also incorporating social and even spiritual values into employees’ career development. Today, good employees demand not just a paycheck but a place where they can grow and develop in some way. How are managers to avoid being caught flat-footed to these changing circumstances? Most managers lead by how they’ve been managed in the past, and…

Leadership Management-Business Software-Technology

Tech Leadership: The Blueprint for Evolving from Individual Contributor to Tech Leader

By Scott J. Pearson | August 13, 2024September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Typically, technical education prepares students for individual positions that require a lot of self-motivated thinking. They don’t usually prepare them for leading teams. Yet some new employees might find that they want to move beyond being an individual contributor (IC) into a leadership role. Getting an MBA would be an obvious educational direction, but that expensive route might not prepare a student for the exact kind of leadership role she/he desires. In this book, Andrew…

Biography-Memoir

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg

By Scott J. Pearson | August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Like many Americans, John Lewis’ casket coming across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 2020 evoked tears in me. He was one of the last great leaders of the 1960s civil rights movement to die. With the Black Lives Matter movement in the streets, the baton had been passed to a new generation. I grew up a white Republican in conservative South Carolina and did not knew who John Lewis was until much later…

Biography-Memoir Politics

Madam Secretary: A Memoir by Madeleine Albright

By Scott J. Pearson | August 2, 2024August 2, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Madeleine Albright served in Bill Clinton’s administration as UN Ambassador and Secretary of State – the first female ever in that role. Since Clinton was especially active in international diplomacy, she held a front-row seat and observed many international characters and diplomatic ventures. Further, her career broke the glass ceiling for women in government, and she did it while being a doting mother, grandmother, and even a divorcee. Finally, along with her birth family, she…

Management-Business Program Management

The Practitioner’s Guide to Program Management

By Scott J. Pearson | July 31, 2024July 31, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Most businesspeople are familiar with the role of project managers. They ensure that projects become executed with quality, on time, and on budget. Not as many are familiar with the role of a program manager. As Irene Didinsky describes in this book, this role organizes a collection of projects to ensure that the organization benefits from them. The Project Management Institute, which publishes this book, supports certifications in both project management (PMP) and program management…

Presentation Software-Technology

Creating Software with Modern Diagramming Techniques: Build Better Software with Mermaid

By Scott J. Pearson | July 28, 2024July 28, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

As a computer science major in college, I learned about Unified Modeling Language (UML) as a way to visually document software. However, I soon found designing and maintaining those images to be more of a pain than they’re worth. I had to reshuffle images on graphics programs for every minor change, so keeping documentation up to date proved to be impossible. Recently, however, I discovered that someone invented a language, called Mermaid, to convert a…

Fiction-Stories

The War on Sarah Morris

By Scott J. Pearson | July 27, 2024July 27, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Sarah Morris faces a problem: After working for decades with one publishing company, she’s reassigned to work with lesser responsibilities. Instead of editing books, she’s merely tagging them – boring, repetitive work. Unfortunately, this reassignment corresponds to a weakening of the country’s economy and of the wider publishing industry. She has no way to go; she’s trapped. Her friends with whom she has labored in the trenches for years are now losing their jobs. Most…

Software-Technology

Systems Analysis & Design

By Scott J. Pearson | July 23, 2024July 23, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Information technology (IT) is a fast-moving industry. Its impact on the modern world is also immense, whether in personal, business, or governmental domains. Almost no medium-sized businesses can survive without a robust IT policy. Despite being critical, those interested in joining the IT workforce will find their skills, gained through education, become quickly outdated. Twenty-five years ago, I gained knowledge from textbooks like this by earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science, yet the field…

Management-Business Program Management Software-Technology

Managing IT Projects: How to Pragmatically Deliver Projects for External Customers

By Scott J. Pearson | July 19, 2024July 28, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Business projects involving information technology require their own set of required skills. The product is electronic, not physical, but the implementation is very abstract and technical. Planning and monitoring the work itself pose their own set of risks. Further, because everyone uses software, many think that designing software does not require special expertise, so projects become improperly designed from the start. Project management education does not routinely cover this niche of practical problems, but in…

Fiction-Stories History

Daughter of Fire: A Novel

By Scott J. Pearson | July 10, 2024July 10, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Catalina is born into privilege as a daughter of the president of Guatemala about thirty years after the Spanish invasion. However, she does not fully embrace that identity since her late mother has native blood. Catalina’s promise to her dying mother was to preserve the Popol Vuh, a collection of native Mayan writings describing their spiritual conception of the world. Her father has ruled as a moderate who seeks peace between the native tribes and…