In the last article, I explored the idea of the diverse groups of people who are the consumers of the services that are provided by an internal technology group, whether an IT or Digital team (or any of the many variants in between. This time around I’ll start to explore a few of those different … Continue reading The Tech Team Value Prop – jobs to be done
Category: Technology
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
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
On a reasonably regular basis, I get asked to speak at events. I mean, I'm not deluged with offers. And none of them pays me. But it's nice to be wanted. However, requests in the last few months go something like this: Me: Thanks ever so. I'd really like to take part. Full disclosure, though. … Continue reading Crossing the divide
A few weeks ago I posted something vaguely witty on Twitter. This is such a regular occurrence that I can't even remember what it was. It was probably funnier in my head than it was on screen. But some people responded to it. Some Likes. Some Retweets. These aren't important to me (of course they … Continue reading Forget about the bloody water cooler
The buy versus build debate is one of the constants in the tech industry. Should you get a product off the (virtual) shelf, or invest in developing something bespoke to your needs? I was recently asked my views on the question, and thought it worthwhile to note where my head is currently at on the … Continue reading Buy versus Build
It struck me last week that organisations claiming to be “data driven” might as well describe themselves as “electricity driven”. Whilst on the face of it a data driven moniker might express some sort of rational futurism in the culture of an organisation, it doesn’t really, ultimately, say anything at all. I think implicit within … Continue reading Data driven?
Do you remember when the fax machine ended? No? No, neither do I. I remember having to scrabble around with a PC that still had a modem in it back in around 2011 to send a fax as part of a mortgage application. I remember around the same time receiving someone else's details in a … Continue reading The end of phone
The history of industrialization is a history of finding scale. Automation of processes so that capital investment in machinery could lead to increased productivity that would, in turn, deliver a return on the capital investment through cheaper to produce, better quality, higher volume goods. The "build it for the exit" model of digital business has … Continue reading Minimum Viable Volume
The idea of organic and synthetic data came up again today. I came up with a new metaphor to explain it... Back when I started taking digital photos back in 2002 (nearly 20 years -sheesh!), the cameras that I used would record a fair bit of metadata about the image when it was taken. The … Continue reading Organic and synthetic data