Posts

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?

Non-Functional Requirements

Hold on a tick People like their systems to be fast. It’s because we hate to wait. In software sometimes there are delays, but they don’t have to be annoying.