Wednesday, 20 October 2010
The Model Village Complex
I have been using MDA (model driven architecture) for a whole now, well I have been using more model driven software development than MDA. However it has to be said that I stop before the actual generation of code. Why? You might say, why go all the way to MDSD without actually wanting building the code... The answer to be honest is that I have been using development partners to do the code development and this takes away one of the key mdsd benefits around the production of a domain specific language. That said to be able to give a model to a Dev partner and ask them to build against it is a powerful thing. The next challenge is assurance!
Monday, 20 September 2010
Danger Will Robinson
The emails that I send are very different from the IMs I send. So when saw someone pasted an IM conversation into an email it took me aback a little. Will this sort of behaviour change the way that people interact over IM? When I send an email I always consider the consequences of it being forwarded on... However in a more real time conversation over IM this rationalisation of thought does not happen to the same degree...
Perhaps I am being to paranoid (or perhaps hard experience) especially as I read a lot of emails sent by other people that have danger will Robinson written all over them! Should I embrace the new world the send what you want emails and hang the consequences...?
Perhaps not, me thinks...
Perhaps I am being to paranoid (or perhaps hard experience) especially as I read a lot of emails sent by other people that have danger will Robinson written all over them! Should I embrace the new world the send what you want emails and hang the consequences...?
Perhaps not, me thinks...
Friday, 20 August 2010
The Programme Mushroom
One of the challenges that I have faced on numerous occasions is project / programme mobilisation (by which I mean getting the piece of work started with people on board). First there is a need, something that is going to drive a stakeholder to spend money. In my experience something does not happen without a reasons, someone somehow needs to identify a need and then convince someone else to pay for it to be fixed. Once this has been done there will be a limited number of people who understand the nature of the initial problem and in a lot of cases have an idea as to how to fix it. This understanding often comes from the "don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions!".
Once funding situation is in hand the next thing to do is shape up an understanding of the need or problem space is in more depth. There are a number of means of doing this, however a word of warning would be to keep this fairly simple as you are still in the problem domain at this stage and your audience is predominantly a business one. As you are doing this your next steps will be from project management for dummies. Namely get a Project Initiation Document as this will shape up what needs to be done and add some good discipline to it as well. As part of the process that PID generation requires you will need to pull together an organisational chart and a start for ten plan.
Once you have the org chart and a plan the next steps are going to be pulling the right people into the right spaces, without loosing the initial aim of the project, which is not easy. My personal experience has been mobilising from a handful of people to several hundred. Do not underestimate the length of time it can take to find hundreds of people work on a specific piece of work. Aside from the main challenge of actually finding the people it becomes increasingly difficult to get someone started and actually working. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who will more than happily do nothing and get paid for it! My personal experience is that recruiters are not technical or familiar with the business and as such they can never really understand your requirements (which might change anyway). As a result get the recruiter to whittle the numbers down and then spend 20 - 30 minutes tops doing a telephone interview. Trust me it will save you hours in the recruiting process. Outline the role as you see it and ask the question 'Is this something that you think would fit your skills / experience profile'. You will always get a yes by the way, but then ask 'how?'...
Personally I like to get every person onto the org chart so that they have an understanding of how they fit into the organisation, however resist the temptation to release a new org chart every day. Look for stability, in the EA space we are naturally adept at handling ambiguity and change as this is what we do, however many people in the delivery space are less well equipt to deal with significant rates of change. When people hit the ground make sure that they have things to do (and reading documentation is not one of them!)... Becoming involved in things as they are happening is the most efficient way of getting up to speed with what is going on. People learn by doing and interacting (and some by then researching what they have done and the conversations that they have had!)..
One last thing, get the message out, people like to understand what they are doing and why.. Forget the knowledge is power thing, it is old hat! Explain to people the purpose of what they are doing, keep the vision
Once funding situation is in hand the next thing to do is shape up an understanding of the need or problem space is in more depth. There are a number of means of doing this, however a word of warning would be to keep this fairly simple as you are still in the problem domain at this stage and your audience is predominantly a business one. As you are doing this your next steps will be from project management for dummies. Namely get a Project Initiation Document as this will shape up what needs to be done and add some good discipline to it as well. As part of the process that PID generation requires you will need to pull together an organisational chart and a start for ten plan.
Once you have the org chart and a plan the next steps are going to be pulling the right people into the right spaces, without loosing the initial aim of the project, which is not easy. My personal experience has been mobilising from a handful of people to several hundred. Do not underestimate the length of time it can take to find hundreds of people work on a specific piece of work. Aside from the main challenge of actually finding the people it becomes increasingly difficult to get someone started and actually working. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who will more than happily do nothing and get paid for it! My personal experience is that recruiters are not technical or familiar with the business and as such they can never really understand your requirements (which might change anyway). As a result get the recruiter to whittle the numbers down and then spend 20 - 30 minutes tops doing a telephone interview. Trust me it will save you hours in the recruiting process. Outline the role as you see it and ask the question 'Is this something that you think would fit your skills / experience profile'. You will always get a yes by the way, but then ask 'how?'...
Personally I like to get every person onto the org chart so that they have an understanding of how they fit into the organisation, however resist the temptation to release a new org chart every day. Look for stability, in the EA space we are naturally adept at handling ambiguity and change as this is what we do, however many people in the delivery space are less well equipt to deal with significant rates of change. When people hit the ground make sure that they have things to do (and reading documentation is not one of them!)... Becoming involved in things as they are happening is the most efficient way of getting up to speed with what is going on. People learn by doing and interacting (and some by then researching what they have done and the conversations that they have had!)..
One last thing, get the message out, people like to understand what they are doing and why.. Forget the knowledge is power thing, it is old hat! Explain to people the purpose of what they are doing, keep the vision
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Why the long face?
As I sit here on another flight, dashing through the clouds I wonder to myself what is happening are we double dipping or bounding back, are we out of natural resources, is the UK coalition going to survive and who is going to be evicted from big brother?
Has the fickle nature of the news media at our finger tips become a monster of negativity and fear ? I watched a programme the other night (the fairy job mother) in which a young man a boxer and a hard man who was afraid, he was afraid of debt, afraid of an interview, afraid of changing the status quo, But not afraid of being hit in the head repeatedly !
Which does lead me to a point in our jobs from the top to the bottom we are architects of change. We must face the fear on a daily basis, no we must embrace it because if don't we will falter when we encounter the resistance to change that we will see as we execute against the change that we begin.
But we must be mindful of the fact that fear of change is something that affects most people, everyone (I do hate all generalisations!) in their life will have faced and resisted a change for the good. So remember that change is a journey and sometimes you will need to take them with you, because the end of the journey is seen as to far off. I remember reading an article about a guy who ran 1000 miles (I forget his name) when he was asked how he could even conceive of such a distance he replied '1 mile at a time'.
Has the fickle nature of the news media at our finger tips become a monster of negativity and fear ? I watched a programme the other night (the fairy job mother) in which a young man a boxer and a hard man who was afraid, he was afraid of debt, afraid of an interview, afraid of changing the status quo, But not afraid of being hit in the head repeatedly !
Which does lead me to a point in our jobs from the top to the bottom we are architects of change. We must face the fear on a daily basis, no we must embrace it because if don't we will falter when we encounter the resistance to change that we will see as we execute against the change that we begin.
But we must be mindful of the fact that fear of change is something that affects most people, everyone (I do hate all generalisations!) in their life will have faced and resisted a change for the good. So remember that change is a journey and sometimes you will need to take them with you, because the end of the journey is seen as to far off. I remember reading an article about a guy who ran 1000 miles (I forget his name) when he was asked how he could even conceive of such a distance he replied '1 mile at a time'.
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Why the long face?
As I sit here on another flight, dashing through the clouds I wonder to myself what is happening are we double dipping or bounding back, are we out of natural resources, is the UK coalition going to survive and who is going to be evicted from big brother?
Has the fickle nature of the news media at our finger tips become a monster of negativity and fear ? I watched a programme the other night (the fairy job mother) in which a young man a boxer and a hard man who was afraid, he was afraid of debt, afraid of an interview, afraid of changing the status quo. But not afraid of being hit in the head repeatedly !
Which does lead me to a point in our jobs from the top to the bottom we are architects of change. We must face the fear on a daily basis, no we must embrace it! because if don't we will falter when we encounter the resistance to change that we will see, as we execute against any change that we begin.
But we must be mindful of the fact that fear of change is something that affects most people, everyone (I do hate all generalisations!) in their life will have faced and resisted a change for the good. So remember that change is a journey and sometimes you will need to take 'them' with you, because the end of the journey is seen as to far off.
I remember reading an article about a guy who ran 1000 miles (I forget his name) when he was asked how he could even conceive of such a distance he replied '1 mile at a time'.
Has the fickle nature of the news media at our finger tips become a monster of negativity and fear ? I watched a programme the other night (the fairy job mother) in which a young man a boxer and a hard man who was afraid, he was afraid of debt, afraid of an interview, afraid of changing the status quo. But not afraid of being hit in the head repeatedly !
Which does lead me to a point in our jobs from the top to the bottom we are architects of change. We must face the fear on a daily basis, no we must embrace it! because if don't we will falter when we encounter the resistance to change that we will see, as we execute against any change that we begin.
But we must be mindful of the fact that fear of change is something that affects most people, everyone (I do hate all generalisations!) in their life will have faced and resisted a change for the good. So remember that change is a journey and sometimes you will need to take 'them' with you, because the end of the journey is seen as to far off.
I remember reading an article about a guy who ran 1000 miles (I forget his name) when he was asked how he could even conceive of such a distance he replied '1 mile at a time'.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Is it cloudy overhead
So where is next? We have the evolution of the cloud or for those of us who have been around a while the cycle of compute power returning to the centre. The advent of an old idea becoming a new one. I know that I am oversimplifying things cloud is so much more than that. As a personal consumer of multiple cloud services I am a huge fan (mainly because they are free). I have apps on the google app engine, docs in google docs, mail in MobileMe and notes in Evernote (that is where this blog started by the way), friends on facebook and I even communicate with my wife over skype. My daughter (aged 8) plays on club penguin (a disney creation) with her online friends (big brother (or in my case big daddy) is watching!) My life revolves around my digital existence. I have not deleted any email since 2000 and I can search it in an instant (I dug out a presentation someone sent me in 2003 the other day). I have 10+ unique email addresses and I monitor them all everyday. All for free, I realise that I might sign up to some flexible privacy agreements, but is my little voice going to be heard among the millions of others (a risk assessed basis). I am sure that if I didn't want my digital conversations to be heard they wouldn't. To be honest I don't think that I am alone, I think that many of the people who read this blog will be able to list 101 other cloud services (as I write this sentence 101 other services I use come to mind, and another blog comes to mind). So to the imbalance of my work life........
Monday, 12 July 2010
Is everyone's head in the clouds?
Are our heads really in the clouds? I realise that this is a term that comes up again and again and to be honest I think I agree with it. Don’t get me wrong I am a massive advocate of cloud computing, it is a real game changer and was the next level of innovation that the IT industry needed. Anyway back to the challenge, cloud computing is a great, great idea for vendors with massive compute power already on the web and providing internet services (Google, Amazon and Microsoft as examples). I could image someone in one of these enterprises at a senior level saying in response to a request for more hardware ‘what capacity are my servers running?’ when the answer came back that exact same exec shouting ‘how on earth has that happened? Oh hang on, how can I sell my spare capacity’?
And so cloud computing is born? There might even be a Dilbert on this. Which leads to the problem, if I do not have a compute infrastructure ready and willing to go how do I create my own cloud? I realise that for many organisations I can buy it in. But for some with paranoia around security (like government agencies, banks and financial institutions) this is not an option.
I know that the internal investment case is pretty hard for any organisation not willing to embrace the concept of ‘my data is in the cloud’ the cloud seems like a great idea, but at this moment in time a long way off.. Or is it.. I do think that the challenge is being risen to by the hardware vendors who are offering pay per click services which is helping.. From my experience it is the software vendors who are slow to catchup.. Without these two entities coming together it is difficult as the risk for lack of adoption falls with SI / outsourcing partners (like us)...
And so cloud computing is born? There might even be a Dilbert on this. Which leads to the problem, if I do not have a compute infrastructure ready and willing to go how do I create my own cloud? I realise that for many organisations I can buy it in. But for some with paranoia around security (like government agencies, banks and financial institutions) this is not an option.
I know that the internal investment case is pretty hard for any organisation not willing to embrace the concept of ‘my data is in the cloud’ the cloud seems like a great idea, but at this moment in time a long way off.. Or is it.. I do think that the challenge is being risen to by the hardware vendors who are offering pay per click services which is helping.. From my experience it is the software vendors who are slow to catchup.. Without these two entities coming together it is difficult as the risk for lack of adoption falls with SI / outsourcing partners (like us)...
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