This week I have learned: getting a discussion started is great fun The Freerangers got past the "difficult second meetup" sometimes daft-looking suggestions might be a good idea... ...although sometimes they're just daft getting stuff done by stopping doing stuff is counter-intuitive but often the right answer Next week: Catapult
For the first few decades of the automobile industry, cars looked like horseless carriages. The infrastructure to support them was ropey. There were restrictions place upon them, like having a man walking ahead with a red flag, that made them fairly useless. But over time things changed; the infrastructure to support motoring began to expand … Continue reading The typewriter-less office
This week I have learned: - learn from disasters. It makes stuff better. - crystallization of ideas takes a while - digital is not the same as a little bit o' agile - short weeks. Hmm. Next week: BCS breakfasts
It's tempting to sometimes think that the world neatly fits into things that are inherently knowable, and those that aren't. A world of things to which "proper" planning can be applied, and of others to which an agile approach needs to be applied in its slapdash, scruffy way. A world of clocks and a world … Continue reading Iterative bridge-building
Things I have learned this week: with football, it's always the hope that gets you but in other matters, continuing progress in building the strategy... ... and more importantly the ecosystem (I wish there were a way of doing this with a little less buzzword) two steps forward, one back with the research project (nearly there) and … Continue reading Weeknote 286: with additional math co-processor
For many years information technology focused itself on automating processes. My distant memories of studying SSADM at University were of an approach that looked at the current reality and tried to map that into a system. In my defence, University was a very long time ago and I wasn't necessarily paying attention. In recent years … Continue reading Reorganizing
There's a weird set of paradoxes that appear to be opening up in the realm of technology management in business at the moment; on the one hand technology is becoming increasingly commoditized so that the needs for running technical stuff - servers, email systems and so on - in house is diminishing. At the same … Continue reading Keeping people API
This week I have learned: - for all the talk of Digital, on the one hand people need to experience things... - and on the other the valuable stuff these days is probably invisible - alongside that paradox, tech management needs the deeply technically esoteric... - ... and the soft skills of influence - generally … Continue reading Weeknote 285: experiential
In my time working at the Government Digital Service I have to admit I got a bit weirded out by the relentless focus on User Needs. It felt cultish. To an extent it still does. But having had some time to reflect, and having spent some time working in different environments in the past six … Continue reading Business needs, user needs, theory x and theory y
This week I have learned: - once you start to ask questions is difficult to know when to stop - the desire to create solutions is strong - "digital" had created a new wave of magic boxes to solve intractable problems - is all about the network - it's hard to emotionally detach from critique … Continue reading Weeknote 284: multiple personae disorder
