Over my nearly 30 years of work, I've picked up a bunch of theories and models along my way. Some of them are useful, many of them I've forgotten. One that I keep coming back to is the 7-S Model. Developed by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in the 1980s whilst they both worked at … Continue reading 7-Ss for Technology teams
Category: Themes
Over the weekend I read a wonderful article by Stephen Wolfram that explores and explains the way in which much of the current wave of AI technologies operate. It's well worth the read. One particular point that has stuck with me is Wolfram's assertion that ChatGPT has blown apart a long-held assumption that the act … Continue reading The Halo Effect of ChatGPT
"Dump and clump" exercises are a fairly common tool in the world of workshop facilitation. Get people to think individually about a topic, and write down the things they think about on individual PostIt notes. ("No, Jeremy. One idea per PostIt note, please. Don't worry, it's not your stationery budget.") You then get people to … Continue reading Snap!
Today's coffee companion runs a small consultancy. We talked about The challenges of being a small business selling to big corporations The way in which time outside a big org appears to be running in slow motion when inside it's going like the clappers Socio-technical thinking the challenge of bringing in revenue, building new business … Continue reading 67th of 100
2/3rds of the way there, yesterday's coffee companion is a designer. We talked about: how design is so much more than graphics my current brainworm about the transfer barrier and how broad collective misunderstanding can be the joy of tactility and how that means playing cards! our collective recent experiences of moving into new organisations … Continue reading 66th of 100
Listening to a talk about generative "AI" last night, it dawned on me that there is a lot of conversation at the moment that appears to be conflating two very distinct issues, namely, the potential near emergence of "Artificial General Intelligence" and an apocalyptic scenario where we see humans losing control to machines. The former … Continue reading Out of control
"It's just semantics" of a phrase that ironically has more than one meaning. There's the face value version, and then there's the way in which it is used to dismiss what is regarded as trivial and unimportant, often by those who get bored by detail. The thing is, it is "just" semantics that too often … Continue reading Pick up a penguin
Metaphors are powerful things. They are core to how we make sense of the world. Good metaphors are a great way to get ideas to transmit. Bad metaphors get in the way of understanding. In the last few months I've been thinking about the metaphor of "technical debt" and wondering increasingly if it is much … Continue reading Technical Credit Card
The methods of user-centric design approaches have increasingly permeated the consciousness of software development teams in many sectors. By no means universal, but the general idea that you start by understanding the needs of the user before you start to build things to meet those needs has increasingly been adopted as good practice. But what … Continue reading User-centred technology teams
The furore around the workplace style of the former Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary is both fascinating and scary. Politically it seems terrifying to me that the party of the establishment, in power for 13 years, might use this episode as an excuse to try to politicise Civil Service roles because of a vaguely-defined … Continue reading Making the hard decisions
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