Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
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, […]
Episode 3 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 having trouble with a new sin. What happens when the CEO envies the social media presence of his competitors and decides to buy some followers?
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?
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). […]
The latest season of Architecture Corner is a series of episodes on the Seven Deadly Sins of IT. I had the pleasure of appearing on “Good at innovation” with Greger Wikstrand, Casimir Artmann, and many others. In this, the first episode of the series, we deal with the sin of pride. What happens when the […]
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 […]
My apologies to René Magritte, as I appropriate his point, if not his iconic painting. After I posted “Storming on Design”, it sparked a discussion with theslowdiyer around context and change. In that discussion, theslowdiyer commented: ‘you don’t adhere to a plan for any longer than it makes sense to.’ Heh, agree. I wonder if […]
Long-time readers know that I have a rather varied set of interests and that I’ve got a “thing” for history, particularly military history. Knowing that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I was recently reading an article titled “Cyber is the fourth dimension of war” (ground, sea and air being the first three […]
Just when I thought I was done posting for the week, they suck me back in. Juicero started lighting up my Twitter feed a little while ago. For those, like me, who have no earthly idea what Juicero is, it’s a startup that makes an “Internet-connected kitchen appliance”: Juicero’s flagship product is a $699 […]
Twenty-plus years in IT have led me to believe that there are very few absolutes when it comes to software systems. Two that do seem to hold true are these: Creating systems is esteemed far more highly than maintaining systems. Systems that are not maintained, will decay. There are a variety of reasons for this […]
Once again, I’m making an appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 438, features Tom’s essay on using sizing for software testing, Kim Pries with a Software Sensei column (canned solutions), and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Organizations as Systems and Innovation”. In this […]
Well, this turned out to be very much a different post than what I’d first thought. Last Thursday, CIO published an article titled “Your Pebble smartwatch will live on when Pebble’s servers shut down” that had good news for owners of the Pebble smartwatch: But now that Pebble has been acquired by Fitbit and is […]