Orginally published on CIO.co.uk, December 2015. I still wholeheartedly believe that Curiosity, Empathy and Humility are the key to successful technology leadership. This week the panel for the 2016 CIO100 awards met for the first time and we discussed what we thought would be the important facets to look for when judging the awards in … Continue reading CIO Archive: Ideal CIO Personality Traits
This week I have learned: that maybe butterfly metamorphosis is the metaphor I need to describe the change work that is coming up. Building a structure around what in many cases will be a matter of taking things right back to basics.the teardown of a "digital" pregnancy test is a perfect example of when a … Continue reading Weeknote 501 – Chrysalis
First published on CIO.co.uk, March 2016. The early glimmers of what became the Play Matrix. In Project Management 101 there is the concept of the Project Golden Triangle. There are three dimensions: cost, time and specification. The idea is that for any project, some of these dimensions are likely to be constrained. If cost is … Continue reading CIO Archive: Agile methodology best avoided when you have known answers
First published on CIO.co.uk, May 2016. CIOs should still be careful for what they wish for. For some time I've been voicing scepticism of the importance of the CIO having a seat on an organisation's board to be effective. Too often it has sounded to me like a perceived shortcut to the hard work of … Continue reading CIO Archive: Sitting on the board might not make you a more effective CIO
Humanoid intelligence is more than just skin deep First published on CIO.co.uk, July 2016. Sticking a face on technology is still a cheap trick used regularly. There's a friend of mine, a colleague from back in the days when I worked at the BBC, who is a touch obsessed with the psychological concept of pareidolia. Every week … Continue reading CIO Archive: The rise of the anthropomorphs
Agile, Waterfall and stupid ideas First published on CIO.co.uk, November 2016. I still see people making the mistaken assumption that a methodology can make a bad idea good. From my extensive research I can tell you exclusively that the following three things do not exist: UnicornsMermaidsA software development methodology that will always successfully deliver From … Continue reading CIO Archive: The siren call of the unicorn
CIOs need to prepare for a future business computing model without the PC First published on CIO.co.uk, January 2017. This one has turned out to be a bit wrong, given Covid... In my work in the last few years I've been skirting between the worlds of digital and traditional IT. One of the things that … Continue reading CIO Archive: #noPC
And so we enter the last 10 albums of this project... In 2011 I left what had been, to that date, my most successful job to date and joined Microsoft. After six interviews, I'm not sure how we didn't all work out that this wasn't going to work out. Culturally, I was never going to … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 2011
Where exactly has 10 years gone? When I wrote the first of these little diary entries back in 2010 I didn't really think that I'd still be doing them more than a decade later. Bar a couple missed during holidays, and one or two posted on a Saturday because the Friday was just too exciting, … Continue reading Weeknote 500: Ten Years of Weeknoting
I love the geekiness of Hot Chip. I also love the music and the tender yet essentially maudlin lyrics. The essence of good disco music, basically. I also recall hearing an interview with one of the members of Hot Chip and hearing how despite being a successful modern pop band they were basically brassic. The … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 2010
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