Hybrid relationships

Most business-to-business businesses are relationship businesses. They are driven by the relationships that exist within and outside. On trust built between people and on the way in which they interact with one another. Whilst procurement processes might deliver a level of objectiveness to the process of establishing new business contracts, who bids and who is … Continue reading Hybrid relationships

The Tech Team Value Prop – Customers

I've had a few months now out of running an in-house technology team to be able to start to reflect on the experience. One thing that is particularly notable, and this is true of technology teams and many other professions too is the prevalence of the proverb of Physician, heal thyself. Put simply, too often … Continue reading The Tech Team Value Prop – Customers

Narcissistic

I've known about the Freudian concept of the Narcissism of Small Differences for many years, and it's a concept that I see around me all too often. In simple terms, Freud argued that groups of people who to everyone else seem all but identical will get extremely het up about what makes them different from … Continue reading Narcissistic

Weeknote 593: exploring

This week I have learned: Sometimes it's not about the technology, but the broader why that teams and organisations are structured. In various conversations with clients this week, challenges of shifting skills, structure and approaches appear to be running alongside challenges of building and deploying tech. It comes back to some of the conversations I … Continue reading Weeknote 593: exploring

Technology as transport

Back in the early days of my career, deciding to do something new with information technology was an expensive business. Before you did anything, you needed hardware; servers to run things on, and software to run on those servers. The things you required arrived in boxes, even the software in the form back then of … Continue reading Technology as transport

Data consumption

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking about concepts of "data products" and how the approaches and methods of Service Design and User-Centred design might be applied to designing data that isn't encapsulated into a user interface. Quite often people in the world of Service Design come from backgrounds that aren't particularly technical. The … Continue reading Data consumption

On the other side

Back in the early 2000s when I was working at the BBC I was starting to have to write a whole series of "Requests for Proposals" - documents outlining a particular need that we were looking for a supplier to fill. Being a diligent sort, I wanted to find a course to go on to … Continue reading On the other side

Understanding Government

Back in the mid-2010s, I spent some time working on a project in the Government Digital Service GDS. The project is lost in history, but part of what I needed to do at the time was to create a taxonomy to help understand the otherwise very nebulous concept of "Government". For some time it's been … Continue reading Understanding Government