4 years, 2 months ago

A taste of value

As enterprise-architecture expands outward (see video) to a much broader scope and scale (see video), we’ll need a different kind of anchor for the architecture itself: less on means such as IT or money, more on aims, ends and purpose. In short, a

6 years, 1 month ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 454

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, 3 months ago

Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?

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, 4 months ago

For Free

I wrote this originally as an email to my fellow students on the Ashridge Master’s in Sustainability and Responsibility. It was just a moment’s inspiration but it connected with quite a few people. I thought it might be worth sharing with a wider group. Saturday morning. I was doing my round of food shopping, which […]

6 years, 4 months ago

My Master’s project and papers. On Walking, Music and Sustainability

First the project report, which was the main deliverable. Ashridge MSc Sustainability and Responsibility (AMSR). Project Report And then the learning review, the secondary deliverable. Year 2 Learning Review And here’s a couple of photos of  my wonderful fellow students and our tutors:

6 years, 6 months ago

A Tale of Two Tweets

Serendipity is a wonderful (and sometimes entertaining) thing. Monday afternoon, two tweets wound up one after the other in my timeline, one interesting and one “interesting” (I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which is which): and My favorite definition for the word “innovation” comes from Scott Berkun: If you must […]

6 years, 7 months ago

This Is Winter Too, (This is Nature Too)

This started out as a photo essay on winter. And then I read an article that disturbed me. I’m a strong supporter of rewilding. I think organizations like Rewilding Britain do great work, so it may seem strange that I was unhappy with this article about them. Near the beginning there’s a quote from George Monbiot […]

6 years, 9 months ago

Ordinary Things

One of the side effects of illness and injury (in my case a slipped disk) can be that your world becomes smaller. You don’t travel for your work. Your chance of being somewhere new is small. You move more slowly and aren’t up to long trips. It’s not feasible to go to all those special places, where […]

6 years, 10 months ago

Defense Against the Dark Art of Disruption

My first post for 2016 was titled “Is 2016 the Year for Customer-Focused IT?”. The closing line was “If 2016 isn’t the year for customer-focused IT, I wonder just what kind of year it will be for IT?”. I am so sorry for jinxing so many things for so many people.🙂 So far, the year […]

7 years, 2 months ago

Building a Legacy

  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 […]