Cause and Effect

5 years, 9 months ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 471

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It’s time for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. Last week’s episode, number 471, features Tom’s essay on the top 20 transformation killers. Jeremy Berriault‘s QA corner is about involving testers in the requirements process. My Form Follows Function segment rounds out the podcast, covering my post “Systems Thinking Complicates […]

6 years, 1 month ago

Systems Thinking Complicates Things

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  I’ve had the honor and pleasure of appearing as a regular on Tom Cagley‘s SPaMCast podcast for almost three years now. Before I write one of my “Form Follows Function on SPaMCast x” posts, I always listen to the podcast to make sure that the summary is right (the implication being, relying purely on […]

6 years, 3 months ago

Innovation, Intention, Planning and Execution

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  Convergence is an interesting thing. Greger Wiktrand and I have been trading posts back and forth on the subject of innovation for almost eighteen months now (forty posts in total). I’ve also been writing a lot on the concept of organizations as systems, (twenty-two posts over the last year, with some overlap with innovation). […]

6 years, 5 months ago

Microservices, Monoliths, and Modularity

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  There are very valid reasons for considering a microservice architecture (MSA) when building/evolving an application. In my opinion, however, forcing modularity isn’t one of those very valid reasons. Just the other day, I saw tweet from Simon Brown saying this same thing: I still like his comment from two years back: “I’ll keep saying […]

6 years, 6 months ago

Emergence: Babies and Bathwater, Plans and Planning

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  “Emergent” is a word that I run into from time to time. When I do run into it, I’m reminded of an exchange from the movie Gallipoli: Archy Hamilton: I’ll see you when I see you. Frank Dunne: Yeah. Not if I see you first. The reason for my ambivalent relationship with the word […]

6 years, 9 months ago

Managing Fast and Slow

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People have a complicated relationship with the concept of cause and effect. In spite of the old saying about the insanity of doing the same old thing looking for a different result, we hope against hope that this time it will work. Sometimes we inject unnecessary complexity into what should be very simple tasks, other […]

7 years, 5 days ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 411

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This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 411, features Tom’s essay on Servant Leadership (which I highly recommened), John Quigley on managing requirements as a part of product management, a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Organizations as Systems – ‘Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the […]

7 years, 1 month ago

Organizations as Systems – “Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown”

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  One of the benefits of having a (very) wide range of interests is that every so often a flash of insight gets dropped into my lap. In this case, it was a matter of “We must recognise that single events have multiple causes” showing up as a suggested read from Aeon on the same […]

7 years, 9 months ago

All models may be wrong, but it’s not a contest to see how wrong you can be

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The one thing you can be sure of is that nothing is dependent on only one thing. Michael Feathers‘ tweet last week brought this to mind: Too often we construct simplistic mental models that fail to account for outcomes that are possible, but inconvenient for us in some way. As Aneel noted while discussing OODA […]