Category: longform
Essays, articles, and other original content.
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Speed, Accuracy, and Flexibility, IBM circa 1920
The purpose of a sales force is to bring a company’s value proposition—its “deal”—to customers. That value proposition results in the development of a company’s “go-to-market” strategy, how it will implement that plan. Central to that activity can be a direct sales force, people who meet face-to-face with customers, a typical approach with complex and…
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Maybe the legacy organization actually knows what they’re doing
Usually we’re told that improving IT means changing the old organization. I’ve been re-reading The Art of Business Value, and re-came across this, to the contrary: This way of thinking has always struck me as a little strange. Our goal is to deliver value, to figure out how to meet the needs that are determined…
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Eirini – Bringing Cloud Foundry & Kubernetes Together
Eirini For DevelopersFor Developers there are two big wins from Eirini. Firstly, if you want a Cloud Foundry cluster and you have access to Kubernetes but not VMs, Eirini lets you get it and kick the tires really fast. Secondly when you do need or want to pull the escape hatch and drop down to…
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Apple iOS 12.2, Apple News+, Apple Card
Screen Time is pretty good, but can always use more. It has that very Apple feature cycle where you expect more easy release, but they tend to keep it overly simple. The second item below should be good: Screen Time – Downtime can be configured with a different schedule for each day of the week…
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Discussing the common “CIO agenda”
I get asked to talk with “executives” more and more. That’s part of why Pivotal moved me over to Europe. People make lots of claims about what executives want to hear, the conversations you can have with them as a vendor. They don’t have time. You have have to be concise. They don’t want to…
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Management, as practiced by a young IBM
Of course, there were countercurrents. Managers wanted to control activities. That impetus for control and management of potential risks led to the rise of bureaucracy, characterized by highly defined processes. Generations of executives micromanaged people all the way down the organization while fighting the growth of paperwork and “signoffs.” Such behavior also originated with Watson…
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Assume that rivals will exercise their options
If you give someone an option, even if it seems like one you don’t want, assume the worst and act/protect yourself accordingly: In the Rent-A-Center deal, there was actually a lot of work to do, and it distracted Vintage from the extension deadline. In the Van Halen deal, there wasn’t particularly, so Monk cleverly created a lot…
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Pumping the digital transformation bunny at the US Air Force, an interview with Bryon Kroger
Few organizations have or rely on as much software the US Air Force. There’s plenty of it around and, thus, plenty to be improved. In recent years, one of the more spectacular digital transformation stories has come from the USAF’s work modernizing their Air Operations Control software. In this episode, USAF’s Bryon Kroger goes over…
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Tips for Michaels
When Kim and I started living together, we had to figure out the shared rules of the house. Back in 2004, Kim provided a handy list for me: General Don’t stomp or “walk heavy.” When you answer the phone don’t belt out a loud “HELLO!” directly into the caller’s ear. Every item in the house…
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🗂 Geico Walks with Watson on AI Journey
Replacing human agents with AI, matching it to the right sales workflow: > “So we watched how this was going very closely,” he said. “We’d review transcripts from the early customer interactions, verbatim transcripts, to see how people are reacting in a conversation with Watson – because they didn’t know it was Watson.” > >…
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🗂 Open Source, Enterprise Software, and Free Lumber
> Please believe me when I say that I totally agree with Holger’s assertion that this process produces absolutely top quality software – and that the people doing the work are often among the very best in their respective corners of the software world. My main beef – which is why I use the term…
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🗂 The Rise and Demise of RSS
> Unfortunately, syndication on the modern web still only happens through one of a very small number of channels, meaning that none of us “retain control over our online personae” the way that Werbach imagined we would. One reason this happened is garden-variety corporate rapaciousness—RSS, an open format, didn’t give technology companies the control over…
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🗂 Pivotal Cloud Foundry 2.4 Boosts Security With Compliance Scanner
Two big features: > So how does zero downtime actually work in production? Seroter explained that, for example, an organization could deploy an application (v1) with Cloud Foundry and then perhaps a second app (v2). After the v2 application is deployed, an administrator could then just simply switch the network route to enable the new…
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🗂 Pairing at DBS
> There are various mechanisms and methods that we use to transform the skills of our incumbents. Dedicated classroom training programs is one way, but it is the least preferred option. Mostly, we believe in pairing employees who need to be trained with others who are native to those capabilities; we have found this to…
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🗂 A lot of effort went into making this effortless
> When Pablo Picasso was an old man, he was sitting in a café in Spain, doodling on a used napkin. He was nonchalant about the whole thing, drawing whatever amused him in that moment—kind of the same way teenage boys draw penises on bathroom stalls—except this was Picasso, so his bathroom-stall penises were more…
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🗂 Kubernetes, what it’s for
> The reason that Kubernetes is successful is because people look at it and they don’t understand why they need it until they see it do stuff. Then they say “Oh my God, I need that!”I can’t say how many talks and presentations I’ve done in front of skeptical audiences where they don’t understand what…
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🗂 Projects versus products, dependency avoidance ed.
> The project/product distinction is an important one for many reasons, so let’s touch on that here for a moment so we don’t conflate or confuse the two, especially since one is more productive than the other. Projects are delivered as one big monolithic thing, meaning that coordinating all the activities within a big release…
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The one minute pitch at DevOpsDays
As a DevOpsDays sponsor you’re often given the chance to give a one minute pitch to the entire audience. Back stage at DevOps Rex, this week, I was talking with a first timer. One minute seems like such a small amount of time: how could you say anything consequential in 60 seconds? You’re presenting in…
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Rule 1: Don’t go to meetings. Rule 2: See rule 1
Coffee is for coders. Whether you’re doing waterfall, DevOps, PRINCE, SAFe, PMBOK, ITIL, or whatever process and certification-scheme you like, chances are you’re not using your time wisely. I’d estimate that most of the immediate, short-term benefit organizations get from switching to cloud native is simply because they’re now actually, truly following a process which both…
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