You adopt practice to “make the team go”. However, every practice you adopt has a cost. The time you spend “making the practice go” is somewhat then a cost of making the team go. I like to talk about the cost of your practices as “Feed the Beast!” But what you really want to make…
A Fascination With Governance
If a little is good, then a bunch must be better, until it isn’t. I was having a conversation on the train the other day on the way home from work. I was sitting with an acquaintance that I ride with from time to time and we were both complaining about the week we were…
Being Agile (is not the goal)
Just reacting to a thought that floated around me in a meeting today. Someone complained that a certain way of doing something “wasn’t very agile”. That’s not very agile. I recognize that I have said it myself. That’s not very agile. As if… Agile is the goal.
Measurement and Management
Over the years this blog has evolved, as my job has changed. From software delivery manager, consulting architect, to enterprise business architect. It has often been about management and leadership because those topics have been at the front of my immediate list of problems in delivering software. Today I read this thoughtful post… by Henry…
A Proliferation of Architects
One of the things that I have observed over the course of this century is the transition away from traditional “Data Processing” titles like programmer, programmer analyst, systems analyst, etc. The key evidence of this trend is the proliferating of self-aggrandizing titles involving the term architect. In 1985 when I graduated, I don’t remember…
Information Driven Projects
When you look at software development or corporate change projects, you often see some creative fiction. There is fiction in the plans, fiction in the designs and fiction in the requirements. This fiction is created by the notion that “Before we can start, we have to know everything required to get to done.” Intuitively, we…
Elastic Staffing Challenges
I have been away from this blog for a while. In fact, I don’t remember when I last posted (I looked it up it was May.) In my hiatus, I have worked on some other writing projects and spent some time with Zed A. Shaw’s excellent “Learn Python the Hard Way”. As a matter of…
Business Capability Model
Current group I am working in is responsible for functional architecture. In spite of the fact that I don’t have any practical experience, I have been asked to help define a practice in Business Capability Modeling. I think the reason for that is that I have some practical insight into the requirements that functional architecture…
Learn To Code – Now
I recently spent some time working my way through “Learn Python The Hard Way” by Zed A. Shaw. Zed is a programmer who has accomplished more than most in his short time on Earth. He is outspoken and often edgy, and has a reputation for being both brilliant and blunt. Zed is the creator of…
Learn To Code – Languages
Its 2014, almost 2015 and conventional wisdom about computers and programming have changed dramatically in the last 30 years since I graduated college. The number of people who use computers have changed from 10% to 90% in that period of time. My Google Nexus phone has way more memory and compute power than the mainframe…