costs

6 years, 1 month ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 454

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I’m back for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 454, begins with Tom talking about iteration planning. Jeremy Berriault comes next with a segment on QA team leads and I bat cleanup with a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Trash or Treasure – […]

6 years, 2 months ago

Architecture Corner: We are special – Seven Deadly Sins of IT

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Episode 6 of this season of Architecture Corner is out (I made a guest appearance in episode 1, “Good at Innovation”). In this installment, the CIO is a glutton for new data center capacity. Chris the CEO (Casimir Artmann) and John the CIO (Greger Wikstrand) are convinced that “we are special”. Can Ann the CFO […]

6 years, 3 months ago

Architecture Corner: No Money – Lights Out! – Seven Deadly Sins of IT

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Episode 5 of this season of Architecture Corner is out (I made a guest appearance in episode 1, “Good at Innovation”). In this installment, Chris the CEO falls victim to yet another temptation. The CEO has decided that no more time and money will be “wasted” on old systems. Can Joakim Lindbom convince him that […]

6 years, 3 months ago

Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?

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The topic of legacy systems is something of a contentious one. In most cases, a legacy is understood to be a good thing. What makes a system “legacy”? Is it a technical or business decision? A little over a year ago, Greger Wikstrand took a stab at clarifying the term with his post “Legacy systems, […]

6 years, 10 months ago

Capability Now, Capability Later

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In my post “Strategic Tunnel Vision”, I touched on the concept of capability. I discussed how focusing on new capabilities can crowd out existing capabilities and the detrimental effects of that when those existing capabilities are still necessary. I also spoke to how choices about strategic capabilities can trickle down to effect tactical capabilities. What […]

7 years, 2 months ago

Building a Legacy

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  Over the last few weeks, I’ve run across a flurry of articles dealing with the issue of legacy systems used by the U.S. government. An Associated Press story on the findings from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued in May reported that roughly three-fourths of the $80 billion IT budget was used to maintain […]

7 years, 9 months ago

Can you afford microservices?

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Much has been written about the potential benefits of designing applications using microservices. A fair amount has also been written about the potential pitfalls. On this blog, there’s been a combination of both. As I noted in “Are Microservices the Next Big Thing?”: It’s not the technique itself that makes or breaks a design, it’s […]

7 years, 10 months ago

Let’s Talk Value (Who Needs Architects?)

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Value is a term that’s heard often these days, but I wonder how well it’s understood. Too often, it seems, value is taken to mean raw benefit rather than its actual meaning, benefit after cost (i.e. “bang for the buck”). An even better understanding of the concept can be had from Tom Cagley’s “Breaking Down […]