It's difficult to make sense of the current wave of panic that is sweeping over the nation as concerns about the Coronavirus strike at the heart of all sorts of things, even if COVID19 itself is curiously absent. Get mildly freaked out and carry on appears to be the order of the day. As businesses … Continue reading The homeworking pandemic
Category: Management
Last week I had the pleasure of catching up with a former colleague G. He and I, some twenty one years ago, were involved in a project that delivered the very first Data Warehouse into the BBC. It was a project that had oversight from John Birt, the then Director General, and a manager with … Continue reading A decade of bad IT?
For the past couple of decades, I've found myself, for one reason or another, in front of groups of people asking them to identify brands that, for them, sum up really great or really bad customer service. In the latter category, the types of brands have remained remarkably stable, even if some of the names … Continue reading Mind the Pizza Gap
Maybe it's just the undue influence of De La Soul in my youth, but there's something about the Rule of Three that I find compelling. Ideas that come in threes just seem... right(er). I've been thinking very hard in the last few weeks about how to bring together an approach that can take us into … Continue reading Technology, change and the rule of three
Over the Christmas break, one of the many things I read was Hannah Fry's book about algorithms, Hello World. It's a cracking exploration in non-technical terms about the world of algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Early on in the book, Hannah describes how all algorithms do one or more of the following things: Prioritization … Continue reading What are your algorithms?
My erstwhile WB-40 Podcasting colleague Chris Weston this afternoon flagged a website that is keeping a watching eye over the plethora of tactical voting websites that have sprung up this year to, primarily, help people who want to vote on grounds of Brexit rather than party allegiance. Who would have thought that we could get … Continue reading The wrong problem
I've got a lot of filtering and prioritisation to do. There is a lot that is new to me. I'm getting to know a new organisation, new people, a new sector, new customers, new technologies (and a few old ones that are new to me). I need to start a journey towards being people-centric. I … Continue reading Three questions
In the year after I left Microsoft, I spent time vacillating as to whether a freelance way of working or a traditional full-time role was my better option. As the work failed to come in during that first year, I veered towards the latter and got to the final two for a CTO role. I … Continue reading Shifting gears
On Friday, for the first time in over six years, I will be walking through the doors of an organisation as an employee. At the end of this week, I become Richmond Housing Partnership's Head of Technology and Transformation. Over the past few years, I've become increasingly interested in how homes are provided in the … Continue reading A new direction
I was a part of a fascinating thread of conversation on Twitter last night about the challenges of delivering technology within organisations, particularly those with legacy and those that are big and/or organisationally complex. https://twitter.com/thommeread/status/1178614943895228416 Tom is in charge of the technology at the Ministry of Justice, and so has legacy, size and complexity in … Continue reading “The Basics”
