Via a re-tweet of this that I saw this morning; An interesting blog post from 2009 about why Lisp failed in the marketplace. Now I don’t want to talk about Lisp, or Java, or anything language specific, I want to highlight this statement, which was what was in the tweet, from the post: Employers much [...]
Well I logged into the Fairfax site BrisbaneTimes.com.au this morning for my dose of occasional local newspaper media (the Brisbane Times is really a web-only copy of the SMH with some local content). Wanted to comment on an article; it seemed they changed their login system and my old login didn’t work. That’s OK, I [...]
This is why I don’t trust off-shoring of aircraft maintenance. The same reason that poisonous substitutions are made in toothpaste or cheap lead paint used on a children’s toy; it’s the whole idea of taking something based in complex skills and knowledge-based engineering and buying on price, which ends up in a business environment like [...]
Whatever else you do, give yourself a chance: Rename every project, initiative and strategic program in your organization to reflect the business change goal instead of the system name: Sales Force Effectiveness Project instead of Salesforce.com Implementation; Evidence-based Decision-making Initiative instead of Business Intelligence Implementation. The impact is surprisingly large. – Business change methodology gaps | [...]
People who manage purely by revenue or share price generally shaft their companies in the medium term. Bob Lewis, of IT Catalysts, is always worth a read and has many insights which I think all developers and architects should pay attention to. So you improve fulfillment (improved quality) and customer service (reduced cycle time). Revenue [...]
Oh … now I get it, courtesy of Errol Morris, who made the Oscar winning documentary Fog Of War, among many other excellent films, who explains in this New York Times interview with David Dunning (part 1): DAVID DUNNING: Well, my specialty is decision-making. How well do people make the decisions they have to make [...]
Here is a primer for business people wanting to know what all the terminology in Agile means to them: What You Need To Know About Agile (PDF). It maps the various agile practices like TDD, Iterative Development, Retrospectives, Backlog, Continuous Integration, User Stories and so forth onto common business categories like Increased Quality, Process Visibility, [...]