Thursday, February 25, 2010
Just How Fast Does Our World Change!!
Been doing a little background surfing for technology and social trends. The following three video's overlap in a lot of content but there is some good unique stuff in each. The really scary thing however is that they are already out of date in a lot of respects!!
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Channel Innovation Requires A Channel Agnostic Architecture
A an insightful blog post from Jost Hopperman VP at Forrester Research. I've copied out a short section from the summary but I would recommend reading the full post here.....
"Multichannel applications and architecture today need to take care of the different behavior of channels to provide a basis for the full emergence of ubiquitous banking (Intelligent Devices Will Drive Ubiquitous Banking). Bank executives involved in application development and delivery as well as architecture need to ensure that their applications don’t support any individual channel, but consist of a layered approach isolating channels and business functionality. App dev and delivery staff needs to:
"Multichannel applications and architecture today need to take care of the different behavior of channels to provide a basis for the full emergence of ubiquitous banking (Intelligent Devices Will Drive Ubiquitous Banking). Bank executives involved in application development and delivery as well as architecture need to ensure that their applications don’t support any individual channel, but consist of a layered approach isolating channels and business functionality. App dev and delivery staff needs to:
- Focus on either building functionality or delivering functionality over the channels within the framework of a defined multichannel framework or solution – but not at both at the same time.
- Build or select the multichannel architecture in a way that channel-specific aspects are located in a clearly defined and cohesive layer of the architecture.
With this approach, a bank’s business decisions will become independent from channels that may or may not be used for a given product or service: The mobile channel won’t exist anymore. As soon as we will see more convergence of channel technology, the need for this kind of multichannel approach will become smaller and smaller."
Friday, February 19, 2010
The Knowledge Workers Challenge To Organisations
Very interest still results from a 7-year, 197,000-person, 23-country study by Innermetrix into how today knowledge workers achieve success.
The old belief is that the role is fixed and to improve requires 'fixing' oneself to best fit the demands of the role, identifying and improving weaknesses to optimise skills and abilities to the demands of the role.
Today's successful revolutionists, however, do the exact opposite. They don't assume they need to change themselves to better fit the role they have. Instead they focus on fixing the role to better fit them instead, accentuating strengths rather than fixing weaknesses.
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Iron Triangle, Cost, Time and Scope?
Just read a great post on Federico Zuppa blog Agile Booknote about the differences in creation and measurement of value in Agile and Waterfall projects. For those considering Agile I would recommend reading the entire post however I thought I'd pick out a powerful twist on the oldest project management rule in book.
"Value is so important that Jim Highsmith suggests replacing the traditional iron triangle for one that includes value.
This is his proposition:
In the old triangle, if "scope" grows either the project will take longer (time is modified) or the cost will be higher (cost is modified). This triangle was used to take management decisions, and to measure the success of the project. Using this triangle, a project is successful if it delivers the scope, on time and within the required budget. The new triangle has value, quality and constraints in its vertices. A successful project in the new triangle is one that delivers value with the expected quality and conforming to the constraints.
Performance measurements, processes and activities are designed to optimise value a project that sticks to an outdated plan that doesn't provide any value won't be successful, even if it finishes on time and with the required cost. Processes should support the delivery of value in a sustainable way, even in changing conditions."
"Value is so important that Jim Highsmith suggests replacing the traditional iron triangle for one that includes value.
This is his proposition:
In the old triangle, if "scope" grows either the project will take longer (time is modified) or the cost will be higher (cost is modified). This triangle was used to take management decisions, and to measure the success of the project. Using this triangle, a project is successful if it delivers the scope, on time and within the required budget. The new triangle has value, quality and constraints in its vertices. A successful project in the new triangle is one that delivers value with the expected quality and conforming to the constraints.
Performance measurements, processes and activities are designed to optimise value a project that sticks to an outdated plan that doesn't provide any value won't be successful, even if it finishes on time and with the required cost. Processes should support the delivery of value in a sustainable way, even in changing conditions."
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Are Your GUI 'Telling' Skills Stunted
I have only picked one tiny part of Bret Victor's fantastic paper on Information Software & the Graphical Interface to illustrate the challenges but as you will see from the contents page extract below Bret sets us some real challenges to 'perceived' wisdom and I think provides a glimpse into a future we should be running towards. For the full paper click here...
Because the child’s “telling” skills are underdeveloped, he communicates complex concepts throughshowing. Similarly, a GUI’s stunted grammar makes telling tedious, but software’s dynamic display is ideal for showing. A user can specify context by pointing somewhere on an information graphic and saying, “There!”
Because the child’s “telling” skills are underdeveloped, he communicates complex concepts throughshowing. Similarly, a GUI’s stunted grammar makes telling tedious, but software’s dynamic display is ideal for showing. A user can specify context by pointing somewhere on an information graphic and saying, “There!”
What is software?
- Of software and sorcery. Is “interaction design” the cure for frustrating software, or the disease itself?
- What is software design? Software is not a new and mysterious medium, but a fusion of two old ones.
- What is software for? People turn to software to learn, to create, and to communicate.
- Manipulation software design is hard. Creating software for creating is tricky business.
- Most software is information software. People spend more time learning than creating.
Graphic design
- Information software design is graphic design. People learn by looking. Looks are all that matters.
- Demonstration: Showing the data. Redesigning Amazon as an information graphic.
- Demonstration: Arranging the data. Redesigning Yahoo! Movies as an information graphic.
Context-sensitivity
- Context-sensitive information graphics. Software trumps print by showing only what’s relevant.
- Inferring context from the environment. The outside world can suggest what’s relevant.
- Inferring context from history. Memories of the past can suggest what’s relevant.
Interactivity
- Interactivity considered harmful. The user can suggest what’s relevant, but only as a last resort.
- Reducing interaction. Approaches to easing the pain.
- How did we get here? The popular focus on interactivity is a vestige of another era.
Intermission
- Case study: Train schedules. Designing a trip planner as an information graphic.
- Demonstration: Trip planning redux. Redesigning Southwest Airlines as an information graphic.
Changing the world
- Designing the information software revolution. Five steps from artifice to art form.
- Designing a design tool. Dynamic graphics without the programming.
- Engineering inference from history. How software can learn from the past.
- Engineering inference from the environment. A platform for implicit communication between software.
- Information and the world of tomorrow. Why all this matters.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Culture Is The Biggest Barrier To Agile Adoption
With so much focus on getting the 'right' culture in large organisations, it seems ironic that rigid cultures are the biggest barrier to Agile adoption.
For a full list of survey results click here
For a full list of survey results click here
Saturday, January 30, 2010
How Much Is User Experience Valued In Your Business?
The last cartoon made me think about an old favourite of mine. How many times has this happened in your projects.........
No You May Not Outsource Your Homework To India
Came across this today and it made me chuckle so that I'd share....
Thursday, January 28, 2010
How Testing Should Be!
I came across the following post by Sam Danes which I think is a great summary of how testing should be.
"I think the next level in test automation is to combine logically with a test engineer's skill set. The traditional "I don't code" testers are becoming less and less needed as the bulk of a testing team.
Automation moves hand in hand with proper white box testing, building stubs, harnesses, emulators that are capable of testing each component in a system in isolation are a near required component of white box testing.
Testing needs to take the step it always should have in the first place where the bulk of your testing team are actually capable of building the product they are testing. You will find far more defects far earlier in the development process by practicing proper white box testing and building good performance tools than you ever will with traditional black box and UI testing.
If you look at most traditional software house testers, even though the may be highly skilled at black box testing, they are mostly not capable of writing their own applications or understanding the full SDLC. In essence testing has always been looked down upon as a "less skilled" discipline than software development. In essence if you had a heirarchy of engineers by skill alone most places would put developers above testers in level of and needs of skills.
If you look towards software companies like Microsoft or Google, testing is actually the opposite. It is harder and more complex in many ways to be a tester (most often refered as something like a Software Engineer in Test) than it is to be a developer. To be a tester you need to be able to do all the things a good developer can do PLUS be able to understand and conduct testing.
You can in fact accomplish a lot with the traditional mostly black box test teams but if testing -- and by proxy automation -- are to take the next logical step test engineers in general need to evolve along with the tools they use.
A fully functioning, deeply technical test team, capable of everything from sitting in on code reviews, to true white box testing, to writing and maintaining the myriad of tools and testing applications in a modern organization on top of understanding and implementing good test practices can bring tremendous added value to the overal SDLC."
Automation moves hand in hand with proper white box testing, building stubs, harnesses, emulators that are capable of testing each component in a system in isolation are a near required component of white box testing.
Testing needs to take the step it always should have in the first place where the bulk of your testing team are actually capable of building the product they are testing. You will find far more defects far earlier in the development process by practicing proper white box testing and building good performance tools than you ever will with traditional black box and UI testing.
If you look at most traditional software house testers, even though the may be highly skilled at black box testing, they are mostly not capable of writing their own applications or understanding the full SDLC. In essence testing has always been looked down upon as a "less skilled" discipline than software development. In essence if you had a heirarchy of engineers by skill alone most places would put developers above testers in level of and needs of skills.
If you look towards software companies like Microsoft or Google, testing is actually the opposite. It is harder and more complex in many ways to be a tester (most often refered as something like a Software Engineer in Test) than it is to be a developer. To be a tester you need to be able to do all the things a good developer can do PLUS be able to understand and conduct testing.
You can in fact accomplish a lot with the traditional mostly black box test teams but if testing -- and by proxy automation -- are to take the next logical step test engineers in general need to evolve along with the tools they use.
A fully functioning, deeply technical test team, capable of everything from sitting in on code reviews, to true white box testing, to writing and maintaining the myriad of tools and testing applications in a modern organization on top of understanding and implementing good test practices can bring tremendous added value to the overal SDLC."
Verizon 100Gbps Backbone Link From Paris To Frankfurt
On Monday (Dec. 14) Verizon became the first telecommunications carrier to successfully deploy a commercial 100G (gigabits per second) ultra-long-haul optical system for live traffic. This system was deployed on the company's European optical core network between Paris and Frankfurt. The accomplishment marks the first time for deployment of ultra-long-haul 100G using a single channel on a production network.
"This latest 100G-first gives Verizon the edge in meeting the growing bandwidth demands of our customers," said Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president of technology at Verizon. "By consolidating traffic onto one large pipe rather than several smaller ones, customers will benefit from increased network capacity, improved transmission quality and greater network efficiencies."
"This latest 100G-first gives Verizon the edge in meeting the growing bandwidth demands of our customers," said Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president of technology at Verizon. "By consolidating traffic onto one large pipe rather than several smaller ones, customers will benefit from increased network capacity, improved transmission quality and greater network efficiencies."
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