Fitness for Purpose

5 years, 6 months ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 467

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It’s time for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 467, features Tom’s excellent essay on value (value is one of those simple-seeming, but complex concepts). Jeremy Berriault‘s QA corner covers testing in difficult circumstances. I bat cleanup with a Form Follows Function segment discussing my post […]

5 years, 9 months 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 […]

5 years, 10 months 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 – […]

5 years, 10 months ago

Microservices or Monoliths – Fences and Neighbors

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  At the end of my last post, “What Makes a Monolith Monolithic?”, I stated that I didn’t consider the term “monolithic” to be inherently derogatory. It is, rather, a descriptive term relating to the style of organizing an application’s architecture. Depending on the context the system operates within, a monolithic architectural style could lie […]

5 years, 10 months ago

Management, Simple and Wrong – Semantics, Systems, and Self-Correction

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Simple responses to complex situations are both seductive and dangerous. The difficulty in juggling lots of variables tempts us to employ abstraction so as to avoid being overwhelmed. Abraham Maslow’s observation, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”, applies. […]

5 years, 11 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, 7 days ago

Architecture Corner: New Technology – Seven Deadly Sins of IT

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Episode 2 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 is experiencing lust for new technology. What happens when the CEO starts drooling over the latest shiny thing without a thought to whether it makes good business sense?

6 years, 8 days 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, 23 days ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 442

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A new month brings a new appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 442, features Tom’s excellent essay on capability teams (highly recommended!), followed by a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Systems of Social Systems and the Software Systems They Create”. Kim Pries bats cleanup […]

6 years, 3 months ago

Systems of Social Systems and the Software Systems They Create

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I’ve mentioned before that the idea of looking at organizations as systems is one that I’ve been focusing on for quite a while now. From a top-down perspective, this makes sense – an organization is a system that works better when it’s component parts (both machine and human) intentionally work together. It also works from […]

6 years, 11 months ago

Skating to Where the Puck Will Be

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I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. Wayne Gretzky   Business people have a thing for sports metaphors, and this one in particular is a favorite. So much so, that Jason Kirby in “Why businesspeople won’t stop using that Gretzky quote” observed: Its popularity has much to […]