Can Watsonx Rebuild IBM’s AI Relevance? - Analysis of IBM’s AI stuff. Also, a good side point: no one really knows anymore what IBM does.
The Pessimism Problem Continues to Grow - It’s 60% now: ’Back in 2020, I wrote a post titled “The Pessimism Problem.” We had completed a survey where 54% of respondents agreed with the statement “We regret nearly every purchase we make after the subscription agreement is finalized.”’
A framework for council technology planning – SensibleTech - “We don’t have much – if any – ‘legacy’ code running on old virtualised mainframes like bits of central government do. In fact, a lot of what is called legacy in local government is anything but – it’s regularly updated and kept working and in line with statutory requirements. So it’s not legacy software. It’s just bad software.” // Getting a common language of digital transformation, a shared model of all the capabilities a local government needs, and an understanding of how all the tech works so that non-technical people can manage it and set strategy.
Touchpoints, coalescence and multi-platform engineering — thoughts from Kubecon 2023 - A sum up of the trends and state of the kubernetes/cloud native community, but an even better picture of the setting and tone.
Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Government IT Spending to Grow 8% in 2023 - “Worldwide government IT spending is forecast to total $589.8 billion in 2023, an increase of 7.6% from 2022, according to Gartner, Inc.” And: “57% of government CIOs plan to increase funding for application modernization in 2023, up from 42% in 2022."
Retrospective of 10 years of digital in the UK government - Great overview of the past ten(?) years of digital transformation in the UK government. I must say: this exact analysis probably applies private sector companies worldwide.
Manage process before people - File under “must be nice…"
Majority of Americans have heard of ChatGPT, but few have tried it - “Just 14% of U.S. adults have tried ChatGPT” - until that gets up to 50%, a lot of the freaking (& hype) is like fearing necromancy. Once you use it a lot you’re like “oh, I see. Not a threat. That dumb-ass box can’t even tell me how to get my kids put their shoes on for school.”
Extending the Pivotal Labs Way: How Tanzu Labs Helps Organizations Deliver Great Software - All about Tanzu Labs, the consulting group at VMware that helps your org get better at software. Their approach is very human centric, very pragmatic, and very effective.
How Ecosystems Are Changing Insurance CX - An example of using digital stuff to improve insurance, here car insurance claims. Also, not the point of needing to integrate with all sorts of third parties and systems: “Vehicle claims are often complicated, involve several parties, and take a long time to resolve. Each participant in the claims process, including carriers, loss assessors, vehicle repairers, diagnostics technicians, and so on, has distinct needs and requirements. An emerging technology ecosystem, consisting of various linked and interdependent technologies, is developing to meet those needs. For example, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and, more specifically, computer vision technologies (CVT) can meet the needs of carriers (assessing the circumstances of the accident and the extent of the damage) and vehicle repairers (diagnostics to repair the damaged car). There was plenty of evidence of such solutions during the conference, which might make the dream of zero-touch automobile promises a reality."
Thinking Strategically About Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) - As with most things, the whole SBOM push is probably a lot simpler to solve than it seems. Also, a delightful “old man yells at secure software supply chain hype” vibe as only Jon could do well.
Cutting Costs by Cutting Waste - Instead of removing travel, R&D, etc. (which were thought to be required for your goals at once), focus on removing waste: Excessive risk management, analysis paralysis, unproductive meetings, imbalance of doing/watching, manual bureaucracy/toil.
How Agile Value Management Creates Value Faster - Some metrics for measuring progress.
Gartner Survey Reveals 71% of CMOs Believe They Lack Sufficient Budget to Fully Execute Their Strategy in 2023 - My take: 100% of executives agree they would like more budget.
On-Premises Cloud Is a Failure. Google Has the Fix - Or you could run Cloud Foundry and call it a day.
First Attempt at Gathering DORA Metrics - Not easy.
Economist Daron Acemoglu: ‘When mistakes involve powerful technologies, you’re going to have trouble’ - ‘He imagines a day when teachers could use AI to create individual lesson plans for every student, or nurses might be able to take on much greater roles in, for example, diagnosing diseases. “Why is it that nurses cannot prescribe medications? Why must everything go through this very hierarchical approach where you have to call a doctor [to do that]?” As it is today, the people who spend the most time with patients — nurses, not doctors — are those who are paid and valued the least. Using technology to empower such workers would raise overall productivity and quality of care while also raising wages.'
Dumping links like Galileo dumped the orange - There’s a lot going on here: ‘These are the interesting discussions we could be having about these tools, if we could stop letting mediocre billionaire live rent-free in our heads as they hold flashlights under their chins and intone “Aaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeeee” in their spookiest voices. These guys are pumping their upcoming dump, and all the biggest disaster-stories are part of the scam: “AI will become sentient” and “AI will do your job as well as you” are both statements whose primary purpose is to increase the value of the stock in companies making “AI” technology (neither “artificial” nor you get the idea). I mean, sure, our bosses will fire our asses and replace us with shell-scripts, but they don’t need working AI to do that – no more than they needed working voice response systems to replace human operators. They just enshittify their products and services, and do it under cover of chasing amazing new technology, and reap the stock gains bequeathed by keyword-drunk investors. But the endless repetition of this vision of Fully Automated Austerity Pronatalist Space Neofeudalism gives people absolute brain-worms.’
Start Your Architecture Modernization with Domain-Driven Discovery - For when you’re doing more than just lift and shift. Also, Marc and I wrote up using DDD for app modernization The Legacy Trap.
The Cult of the Founders - Operating a large tech company is a different set of skills than marketing a small company.
“The Dead Silence of Goods”: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore - The culture of big box stores as seen through French eyes.
ICYMI: Instagram’s New App Could Be Here By June - Adding a microblog to Instagram?! // “You can post text updates up to 500 characters (that’s less than an Instagram caption, an extended tweet or a LinkedIn post so be concise!)"
- Innovator’s Dilemma dynamics - “while a $40 million company needs to find just $8 million in revenues to grow at 20 percent in the subsequent year, a $4 billion company needs to find $800 million in new sales. No new markets are that large. As a consequence, the larger and more successful an organization becomes, the weaker the argument that emerging markets can remain useful engines for growth…. Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologies unknown at the time of their development, they are unknowable. The strategies and plans that managers formulate for confronting disruptive technological change, therefore, should be plans for learning and discovery rather than plans for execution."
Adding A Product-Led Growth Strategy To A Traditional B2B Organization - Among other things: don’t forget they your sales model is going to drive your product management, eventually.