Enterprise Design Debt The concept of design, or technical, debt is fairly well covered around the web. This article looks at how all that debt being created on projects might be wrapped up and managed from an enterprise perspective.

Build or Buy Or Customise and Confuse A short article on why thinking in simplistic terms like buy or build your software is dangerous. There are some good rules that should determine which is right for which situation. Both are necessary, but buying when you really should be building can be a major mistake.

The Requirements Delusion Successful IT requires that you educate your business into getting the best from its technology capability by exploring the possibilities, not blindly trying to meet their requirements.

Frequency Analysis Decoder A basic game that encrypts a random piece of text using a substitution cypher and lets you use frequency analysis to decode it.

SOA Myth and Mystery SOA can be dangerous if it’s seen (or sold) as a panacea. Like any IT design approach it’s hard to get right. Put all your success eggs in your SOA basket at your peril.

The Business Alignment Fallacy Business alignment is a hot topic in IT. Here I put forward the idea that attempting to align IT and the business is a fruitless exercise, because alignment is a fallacious concept. Everyone in the organisation is the business. IT is therefore already aligned. What’s needed is talk about possible capabilities, not talk of alignment.

Fractal Amplification 1 Good coding, and ultimately good architecture, is about a very very very simple concept - putting the right thing in the right place.

No C in Teamwork It’s easy to confuse teamwork and success. They aren’t always the same. Sometimes to be successful you have to suspend your own needs to work towards a greater good, which in the end is better for everybody.

Kill Your Children Selling new ideas, especially ones with a technology basis, can be difficult. People get bored so quickly with technology presentations, and yet they will sit through a two-hour film without any difficulty. It’s all about narratology.

Managing People We all have to face that stay-technical or manage decision at some point in our IT careers. But why not both? Are not the best managers those that retain a feel for what IT is all about?