In this little article, I write about combining strategy with agile development to do validated strategy instead of central planned strategy.
Tag Archives: CoteWriting
How Kubernetes adds agility in challenging times
New article of mine:
The IT outcomes of Kubernetes are clear: 95% of businesses report clear benefits from adopting Kubernetes, with more efficient resource utilization and shorter software development cycles amongst the top benefits cited. The benefits don’t stop with the IT team, though. In an era where IT mostly determines competition and growth, the more agile the technology at the heart of a business, the greater the agility of the business overall.So, the business case for Kubernetes is clear. To those of us in IT at least.It makes sense that empowering development teams to do more in less time has clear benefits for businesses on paper. But given the inherent complexity of Kubernetes, the way in which these benefits actually manifest may not be so clear for those outside the IT department, particularly in the early stages of implementing the technology.Here, we look at why the tangible outcomes Kubernetes can provide across a business are worth overcoming initial challenges it may present, and what it means in the context of global events many organisations have been faced with in 2020 so far.
Read the rest!
Book Review: Automation & tech ethics, book review
I reviewed two books on automation and digital transforming this month: The Wealth of Humans and Silicon Collar.
These two books go well together because the first describes how automation is lowering the need for labor, leading, likely, to less jobs, while the second provides a compendium of examples of such software-driven labor change.
Vinnie’s book has the optimism of a technologist, while Avent’s is much more fraught. Both accurately describe how IT is optimizing and replacing “analog” labor and businesses, leaving the core problem of devaluing human labor, perhaps to the point of eliminating millions of jobs, permanently. Vinnie’s optimism is the usual believe that we can figure it out, mostly by being more humane in our politics and safety nets, but also in the belief that new problems and jobs will come about. Avent, on the other hand, offers little in the way of solace.
As the review in his magazine, The Economist, put it: “I found the virtuosity with which Mr Avent knocked down possible solutions disquieting.” Aside from actually reading the book, the lecture Avent gave at LSE is good stuff too.
Check out the full review.
WTF is “digital transformation”? Beyond AI and VR for practical, software-driven innovation – My January Register Column
At the top of the year, companies are setting their IT agendas. Most high level executives seem to be lusting for “digital transformation,” but that phrase is super-squishy. In my Register column this month, I offered my advice on what it should be: simply “digitizing” existing, manual work-flows by perfecting how you do software.
This, of course, is the core of what I work on at Pivotal; see my wunderkammer of knowledge, the soon to be PDF’ed “Crafting your cloud native strategy,” for example.
What do these opportunities look like in businesses? Here’s a chunk that cut out of the piece that provides some examples:
A project to “digitize” the green card replacement program in the US provides a good example of the simple, pragmatic work IT departments should be curating for 2017. Before injecting software into process it’d “cost about $400 per application, it took end user fees, it took about six months, and by the end, your paper application had traveled the globe no less than six times. Literally traveled the globe as we mailed the physical papers from processing center to processing center.”
After discovering agile and cleaning up the absurd government contracting scoping (a seven year project costing $1.2bn, before accounting for the inevitable schedule and budget overruns), a team of five people successfully tackled this paper-driven, human process. It’s easy to poke fun at government institutions, but if you’ve applied for a mortgage, life insurance, or even tried to order take out food from the corner burger-hut, you’ll have encountered plenty of human-driven processes that could easily be automated with software.
After talking with numerous large organizations about their IT challenges, to me, this kind of example is what “digital transformation” should mostly about, not introducing brain-exploding, Minority Report style innovation. And why not? McKinsey recently estimated that, at best, only 29% of a worker’s day-to-day requires creativity. Much of that remaining 71% is likely just paid-for monotony that could be automated with some good software slotted into place.
That last figure is handy for thinking about the opportunity. You can call it “automation” and freak out about job stealing, but it looks like a huge percentage of work can be “digitized.”
Check out the full piece.
6 DevOps columns: government, compliance, ROI, management
Last year I wrote several columns for FierceDevOps. Nancy Gohring was the editor there and graciously asked me to do so (she’s moved over to being an analyst at 451 and is doing awesome work over there). The FierceEmpire has shifted their stuff around and now it’s either impossible or impossibly tedious to find those pieces, so I moved them over to Medium. I’ve got to get my URLs to be my overly self-referential self, after all!
Here they are:
