Effective use of travel time

Like so many people today I am a regular commuter spending time on trains and in cars and I try to spend my time productively. My main challenge is that in the morning I feel bright and alert and want to work on projects that I have running (maintaining websites, writing some code, catching up on twitter, blogging and the like) and in the evening I am pretty much good for nothing.. If anything all I can get the motivation to do is watch a TV series (my train commute is not long enough for a movie).. Although I do think that some TV watching is productive as it allows me to converse with the office in the morning (although often about something that was on TV years ago)..

I suppose the questions comes as to why I am writing about this well, I am fully connected most of the time via mobile broadband. Which leave me the question, were does work end and my life begin?


I have yet to work out how I realistically work in the car !

(Images via wikipedia)

The value of consistent direction

I have decided to name this post the value of consistent direction and to be honest I am sure that there are 101 management principles around this. In recent years I think that I have been lucky enough to have a collection of managers who have understood either consciously or unconsciously that in order to make forward progress you need to be consistent in the direction. Without a common and in many cases a singular vision as to what is going to happen and where a project / programme / department / piece of work is going it is never going to get there.

A term that I am going to use and I am sure I am not the first is the 5 year olds playing football.. Namely were-ever the ball is that is where they all run to and this is often dictated by whichever 5 year old kicked the ball last. Without a consistent management approach that gives clear guidance as to a direction then 3 steps forward 2 steps back is the best you are going to get.

I can almost hear the hecklers in the background saying, what about if the direction is wrong. Well I can see that as well, sometimes the initial direction is wrong, however in many case it might be off the bullseye but if it is on the board then go for it!

The arrival of the Netbook

As you may have noticed from a recent lack of blog activity I have recently changed job. The ramifications of this have been less time to blog and also less Internet time. I did make the IPhone leap recently which I was sure at the time would compensate for this change, however I can say that it didn't quite work out. You cannot beat a keyboard!

And so I decided to bite the bullet and get myself a Netbook. At home I have a 3 year old MacBook Pro, which has been one of the best purchases I have ever made, it still works like a dream. After much research I decided to get a Dell Mini 10v, for a number of reasons.. It is one of the cheapest models, it gets good reviews and it can take without to much effort OS X.

After a little delivery trouble (Dell delivered a week early) I got my NetBook on Friday! The first thing that I did was to look at changing the OS to OSX Leopard, which I did on the train on Friday morning.. Not surprisingly I hit troubles and failed to do an install, in order to ensure that I had a machine for the train home I did a quick Ubuntu (9.04) install so that I could have a browser..

To be honest I have really had my eyes opened I am using the Netbook remix and after only a weekend I have decided to stop with Ubuntu on my Netbook.. It just works (ok apart from the jumpy mouse which after a quick look on the forums I found a fix for)..

To get around some of the OSX compatibility challenges I have put my email onto Google mail and will use Google mail on my Netbook and OSX mail on my MacBook Pro. MobileMe account is going to factor as my 'how to move files' and also backup.

For anyone thinking of Ubuntu, give it a try I have been using a Windows machine and found it quite frustrating in terms of performance and general usability. All I want is a machine that gets my running in minutes on the train (Windows took 5 minutes to boot and be usable!), get onto the Web (via mobile broadband) and allow me to browse, mail and watch the occasional movie.

To be honest with the connectivity that is available today I spend the majority of my time in a browser and after a little research I use Firefox in full screen mode and keyboard short cuts!

How safe is our identity?

There have been a number of interesting developments in the identity and access management space over the past 12 months or so. Some of these have been moving us into very exciting and scary areas. The technologist in me is in awe of what we have the capability of doing, the citizen in me feels like it would the safest thing to do, and the individual in me is frightened!

The technology exists to spot people in crowds, spot retinas at 3 metres and compare these against identity databases. Mostly these systems are targetted at the unsavoury elements of society. However my question is, who decides that these people are unsavoury?
Many thanks

Matt
Sent using BlackBerry®

A week without communications (nearly)

Well for the last week I decided not to follow blogs (or Blog) or tweet or yammer or email (other than the usual personal emails) or read articles or news groups to see what happened... And other than the fact that I nearly nearly made it, the experience was pretty pleasurable. I did not miss the frequent updates from Paul Daniels on the animals in his garden, or the wise technology words from Ron Tolido, nor did I miss the regular chatter of work emails about the delivery states of the programmes I am working on the rest of the corporate miscommunication that is so popular. The one thing I could not miss out on was my personal email as this is a lifeline to my diverse friendship group (although I did not go on the forums or groups). To be honest if my blackberry was not a combined work and personal machine I do not think that I would of followed my personal email ( of the best features of BIS is the filter!)....

What does this say, well I have yet to catchup. But my experience is that if you are in the now yesterdays news is old so why bother.... Someone will tell me if there were important things I have forgotten, and someone will Blog/tweet/yam about some of the 'old' news anyway...

I was on holiday with my wife and kids, but sometimes it is good to unwind, not just the Ill put my laptop down for tonight, but really unwind.... Try it....
Many thanks

Matt
Sent using BlackBerry®

Do I even need a laptop

I have been pondering the question of mobile connectivity for a while now and to be honest I am not sure I need something as big as a laptop any more. I am a big blackberry fan (and have been for a while) and have had a laptop as my main device for sometime. I do like the keyboard and for sustained writing it is a must, however I spend quite an amount of time on the road traveling between sites. Which leaves me with the question, do I need a desktop device...?

The days of long winded emails for me are long gone, I prefer to read short emails and send shorter ones. Mainly as a way of keeping on top of the fairly consistent barrage. I have a browser (Opera), an RSS reader (Viigo), IM Client (Windows Live Messenger) and a twitter client (TweetBerry) installed and all the native Blackberry features, what more do I need.. I would like to say that I only need my mobile device, but I cannot.. A big screen (big is quite a relative word) and a big keyboard are a must I think I would struggle without them at the minute, I mean as I blog I have a second screen connected to my laptop so that I can multi-task. That said I am tempted by an iPhone, or another device that can do what my blackberry can, but with a bigger screen....

What is the next stage in desktop development....?

I must admit that I have taken inspiration for this entry from a great blog by Andy Mulholland on the a procurement at the desktop level. In the blog Andy writes about General Dynamics winning a piece of desktop refresh work with a solution predicated around thin devices at the desktop and the provision of centralised services. The whole article can be found here. In a little Q&A at the end of the article Andy makes a great point about the other possibilities that this presented and it has made me ponder. If I have a thin client (or any device that is capable of presentation of a thin client style interface) what can I do with it. If the infrastructure that supports this is predicated around connectivity via either Wi-Fi, WiMAX or 3G, namely whatever is available and I am sure could use 'free' services what is next?

It strikes me that there are a number ways that this could be leveraged, I mean why stop at just the desktop. What services exist on the desktop that will be required... Outside of the power user community, well then again mybe not.. I am probably a power user and I have considered my application usage on a daily basis... Email (a must and Outlook in my case), a browser (firefox for mainstream browsing) and IE for those work apps that just do not want to work with firefox, a word processor, a spreadsheet function, a presentation creation tool (more MS office apps), an Enterprise Architecture Modelling tool (it is what I do after all), something for music (iTunes) and and IM client.. I also have a bunch of apps that I use less frequently like Eclipse and a VNC client... And a bunch of services that live in the periphery like corporate software distribution, anti virus, firewall..

So what services can I get on the internet for free that I could use as a desktop replacement.. Well Google seem to have the space fairly and squarely sown up (I make the assumption that a browser and citrix style client) or have they a fairly recent announcement from Microsoft that will allow MS office to be used via a browser, Google mail for email with some form of DNS hosting and MX record so that people can have a corporate identity (there are other providers). An EA tool might be more difficult I am not sure you can get one online (although I have not really looked), and IM client from either Google or anything Jabba based.. As for iTunes well there is always Dot Tunes.. As for the apps I use less frequently, well I could use a browser based VNC client (and server) and do my development on a development server.. I realise that this is not a new concept (a thin client utilising centralised services) however with the advent of mobile communications to the level that we are at this is becoming a much more realistic proposition.

Large Programmes / Innovative Projects and Mobilisation

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..

SOA Meets Business Processes

After my previous post around what SOA is, I thought that I would spend a little outlining my thinking on the major areas associated with SOA. I must admit that I am borrowing from a number of sources here SE Radio, The favourite, wikipedia, My links, (at this point I have decided the list is much to long to put anything other than..) etc.

In the current climate the corporate agenda is mostly filled with 'how do I cut costs?' opposed to how do I implement my new IT strategy which means that in order to even get close enough to get stakeholders excited, money needs to come into the equation (which is MV = PT by the way).

So you have targeted identified a collection of stakeholder(s) and sold them (Yes believe it or not we in the EA space are actually sales people, we just might not get the commission!) the concept that the road map needs to incorporate Services.. Probably the concept you have sold is that for the next project we can work in a quicker, leaner, more agile way, 'if' we consume from a number of services and these might as well be Business services as they are what the stakeholders will see. Great, from the aspect of a business user I can see a business process that consumes from a number of autonomous business services drop them all together and I get a working solution, easy! I also think that this idea needs to be sold communicated using business language opposed to technobabble. Gone are the days when I can talk about components, classes, methods, parametric polymorphism and the like (not that I ever did). What you need to do is articulate realisation of business challenges using Information Technology in an intuitive way.

All the time considering where in the quarterly life cycle you are, because this new initiative will be expected to return results by the next quarter!

Now the clock it ticking.. So what next.

SOA, A Perspective (namely mine!)

One of the great things about SOA (or Service Oriented Architecture) is that it means many things to many people. I am sure that if you ask a room full of architects what SOA is you will give one of two things (or potentially both) a room full of different answers and / or an argument about what it is. If you consult the many many resources on the Web (Amazon, Wikipedia, Google etc) you will find one hundred and one resources all focused on the same thing. After voyaging through a number of these I thought that I would articulate my thoughts..

First and for most I am of the opinion that SOA is more of a belief than a collection of technologies (although the vendors would say 'buy my product and you have a SOA!'). Having seen SOA implementations from the inside and also been on the outside witnessing the hardships I can say that this opinion has been re-enforced. So what do I mean by this, well, over the next few blogs I will outline my thinking in the SOA space. I have jotted down a few thoughts as to what I am going to articulate.

So what is SOA anyway (you could read the wiki!)

• Business Processes
  
• Component based development
  
• EAI
  

Challenges

• Making it last, how SOA becomes a strategic aim
  
• It's all about the money
  
• Skills, Skills and more skills
  

So much to blog.... So little time..

TOGAF 9

I am sure that anyone in the architecture space has seen the arrival of the new iteration of The Open Groups Architecture Framework, which landed recently. The much awaited new appearance of the widely used framework as been worked on for quite a period! The new iteration has had a considerable amount of contribution from Capgemini who have introduced an enhance Content Framework, there has been a degree of debate about what this means as a response to a blog from Ron Tolido. I was at the BCS Enterprise Architecture (EA) Speciality Group (SG) at which I am not sure you will be surprise TOGAF 9 was a major topic of conversation (outside of the usual conversation of what is Enterprise Architecture anyway debate). During one of the coffee breaks I had an opportunity to catch up with Wayne Horkan CTO (UK & Ireland) of Sun Microsystems a BCS peer of mine and also an old work colleague. Which sparked some interesting conversation on what needs to happen in the EA Framework space, especially as we were at the BCS talking about the subject!

Wayne has a great blog which points you at a number of interesting evaluation of TOGAF 9 and also talks about a point (which was the topic of our conversation) about the introduction of more 'architecture' into the TOGAF Framework (In which I also get a mention, thanks Wayne!).

My personal perspective which I am sure will cover more than one post is that architecture frameworks need to get simpler not more complex. When Judith Jones showed me the new TOGAF 9 book and said that it was twice as thick as the old one, I must admit I thought it would propagate to an even greater degree the 'ivory tower' complex that engulfs many EA practices. One of the things we talked about at length during the BCS EA SG was that EA practitioners need to become more intricately involved in the Business and what it wants to do. One of the main ways of doing this is to talk their language, which means investing time effort and energy to understand what their aims and objectives are. I for one am all about a common language for architects. However we need one that is simple enough that when we speak with our business colleagues we do not blind them with pseudo science because whenever we do this we loose needed credibility.

Agile vs waterfall

Could it be true? The long term battle of agile vs waterfall is finally over.... It would seem that SOA and web 2.0 have finally put the final nail in waterfall?

Personally I feel that this war has a long way to go. There are a number of outstanding questions that have to be answered before we can finally draw a line in the sand. Such as what about critical systems, what about the role of off-shore (or as my blackberry would rather say odd-shore), what about existing developments, what about contracts that require certain types of testing... That is to name but a few...

I think that either method is suitable in the right environment and the silver bullet? Well like so many others it is more marketting hype that a reality....

Many thanks

Matt

Sent using BlackBerry®

MDA, so who is doing it?

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!

Many thanks

Matt

Sent using BlackBerry®

Apple behind the curve....

As a bit of a Mac and apple fan I can say that I am a bit surprised by the lack of web 2.0 tools in the mobile me offering. Yes, yes I do have a .me account (have had a .Mac one for a while now) and it would be nice to be able to Blog off it. I am sure I could build something, but what is the point when there are specialist tools that do it for me?!?

Many thanks

Matt

Sent using BlackBerry®

Form IM to Email

The emails that I send are very different from the IMs I send. So when saw someone pasted an I'm 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) and should embrace the send what you want type emails and hang the consequences...?

Many thanks

Matt

Sent using BlackBerry®

The Social Enterprise

I will open with a question.... Has anyone seen a social enterprise using enterprise 2.0? Personally I have seen a number of attempts but nothing successful. I must admit that when I am talking about an enterprise I am talking about tens of thousands of employees. Whenever I have seen a social network started and lots of people invited, I am the only poster! And after checking for something a couple of times and setting up a notification it all seems to dry up. Perhaps it is that people are politically correct, knowledge is power after all.

Many thanks

Matt

Sent using BlackBerry®

Rolling with the tide

It has occurred to me over the years that the rate of change in IT is
very slow.. I have been reading on lots of Blogs that SOA is
dwindling, cloud computing is the next big thing.. We are moving from
TOGAF to Lean and that everything is slowing down. I must admit that I
am not so sure, being a bit of an optimistic pragmatist means I like
to have a positive outlook on everything but also try and keep myself
ground. I think that lots of great thinkers have moved on, beyond SOA
into the cloud, however the majority of organisations are only just
starting to think about SOA in any meaningful way.

Anything that is outside of a point technical solution that requires
organisational change, strategic change, technology change, to name
but a few will take years to filter into the mainstream. As it happens
the areas I just mentioned are not nearly the level of impact that SOA
has. I mean how old is the oldest system in your organisation?

SOA is dead long live SOA!

Or is it? With the current state of the market and the decline in discretionary spending is it a nail in the coffin of SOA? Gartner have produced some figures around the adoption rates and they are saying that SOA adoption is tailing off, my view is that adoption is falling off because lots of organisations have already adopted! However as SOA is a more a mindset than a technology is the mindset changing? I mean if California are on the brink of going bankrupt what are the hopes for a technology that is so hyped that the commonly held belief is it is a single shot silver bullet..

Many thanks

Matt

Sent using BlackBerry®

First Blog

After resisting the temptation to drop random thoughts out onto the web, I have finally decided to give it a go. So in my first Blog I thought that I would clarify, as much in my own mind, what I am going to be blogging about. That said, I am not sure that this is going to be an exhaustive list as to be honest I think that I am just starting out, a virgin blogger so to speak.

Which does lead me to my initial point, what to Blog about....

As I work in the IT architecture space, I suspect that IT is going to be pivotal , but then again....

Back to the list....

After reading a great article on how google works I suspect that grid computing is going to be quite high on the list, with SOA being quite close behind. I realise that I should be blogging about web 2.0 but as I work on large programmes SOA is a better title. Which leads me nicely into the whole 2.0 side of things....
Many thanks

Matt
Sent using BlackBerry®