There is a truism that I have often heard repeated by teachers that when a pupil performs well it's because of the pupil's talent, and when they perform badly it's blamed on the teacher. This sprung to mind when I recently read reports of research from Gartner about companies and their IT strategies. The news item was … Continue reading When is an IT strategy a business strategy?
Category: Themes
From a conversation with @bindik, @plankytronixx, @MikeOrmond and @mtaulty this week, an unordered list of things that start ups consider when they are making choices about which technologies to use: is it free? can I find people with the skills to develop on/with it? can I hack things together quickly with it? will a VC … Continue reading How start ups choose technologies
Amongst the mass of three-letter abbreviations (TLAs) that permeate the langauge here at Microsoft, there are two that I've been giving a bit of thought to in the past few weeks: ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) and CSVs (Cloud Services Vendors). Putting aside that there are over 17,000 TLAs available and we seem to be having to … Continue reading Moving products to services
Achievements this week included: - second week of full-time-working parenting involving but two trips to the GP and one to Kingston Hospital - mid-year review planning reaches fever pitch - preparation for a talk on Storytelling to some Microsoft students this weekend Next week: some rethinking of priorities for the next six months in light … Continue reading Weeknote 82: to A&E and beyond!
Spoiler alert: I'm about to do a whole load of advocacy for the devil... Earlier this week, to much fanfare, Michael Gove announced planned changes to the current England and Wales ICT curriculum, moving focus away from training kids in how to use computer applications, and moving instead to teaching them the fundamentals of computer programming. … Continue reading Does the UK really need lots more programmers?
In May I'm going to be giving a presentation at The IT Director's forum (see http://www.itdf.com/Spring-Conference.aspx for more details). I've entitled the talk People-Centric IT, and am looking for a few volunteers to help as a sounding board for me to shape it. If you are interested in helping out, please tweet me @ballantine70, reply on … Continue reading Sounding boards requested
Last week I wrote about a way of thinking generically about different types of app. Today, I'm going to take a look at the underlying business models that might underpin apps. To start with, many apps are developed out of altruism. Software developed for charity, for general good, to prove a point or “just because” … Continue reading Types of App business models
We've been doing some thinking in the past few months about categories of "apps" - whether those deployed onto devices, or web apps sitting in a browser. It's extended out of the conversations about "when to app" that I started last year, and attempts to put together a schema for categorising apps that can help … Continue reading Types of App
Yesterday was a day spent on the sofa, still marginally recovering from the excesses of the Christmas holidays, and collecting my thoughts in advance of a new year. Through this combination of general laziness, we found ourselves watching an edition of the property show Location Location Location from the year 2000 on More4. After picking myself up off … Continue reading Looking back
Achievements this week included: - development of a new model to describe types of apps, and underlying business models - synopsis and structure for a talk I'll be giving at the IT Director's Forum in May... - ... and also one I'll be doing about Storytelling in January to some students - some view on … Continue reading Weeknote 80: to end the year
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