The Product Model in Traditional IT - Silicon Valley Product Group : Silicon Valley Product Group - ”Outcomes vs Predictability” is good framing for switching from traditional IT to “digital transformation."
Does Social Media Cause Anything? - It’s difficult to collect data about social media’s effects (good or bad). // “the ever-present spiderweb of the social graph, the network of accounts, RTs and likes that lets me understand not only what someone thinks but what everyone else thinks about them thinking that.”
Platform Engineering is just adding Product Management to Ops
I don’t know. I’ve been trying to sort out what platform engineering is for awhile.1 It matters a lot for my job! While I haven’t verified it, it seems like it started as a marketing campaign from Humanitec and then took on a life of its own. Now the likes of Gartner have practice areas for it and are hiring analysts to cover it. This means that people in enterprises are trying to sort out what to do about platform engineering.
Gartner Survey Finds 64% of Customers Would Prefer That Companies Didn’t Use AI For Customer Service - “Many customers fear that GenAI will simply become another obstacle between them and an agent. The onus is on service and support leaders to show customers that AI can streamline the service experience.” // I mean, that’s the point right: otherwise “productivity” wouldn’t improve. The hope is that the AI things are better at solving problems. The problem is that you usually need a human to actually change things, make things happen, and deal with exceptions. Otherwise, you get stuck on an accountability sink.
DevRel’s Death as Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon - A list of how to show marketing value.
Jevons paradox - When you automate something very valuable (or just “costly”), people demand more, and more complex product. This pulls in more need for labor that can do the more complex work. Hopefully.
How to blackmail your boss into adopting platform engineering, DevOps, agile, etc.
This is a good talk listing some tactics for changing how organizations work. It’s targeted at executives. What’s bonkers is that, as the screenshot below, it has just 27 views.
In the talk, we have a former group CIO at American Airlines. She’s telling you her tips for how to introduce change in a large organization. As Gene “The Phoenix Project” Kim says in his intro, American Airlines is the biggest airline in the world.
AI transforming banking, reports UBS executive - ”The Swiss bank has integrated AI into its services, launching a pilot last year for instant credit tailored to small and mid-size companies requiring liquidity. This service enables bypassing credit officers to expedite the process for this standardised product.”
The World Is Eating Software - The software bubble. Also commentary on power steering.
Accountability Sinks - ’“accountability sink”: a situation in which a human system delegates decision-making to a rule book rather than an identifiable individual. If something goes wrong, no one is held to account.’
That’s a good phrase to point out something people seem blind to. Humans set policies, humans can decide to un-set policies.
It’s a version of “it’s just business,” which people who have/use that sentiment forget is a catch-phrase for mafia movies when they kill people.