a blog about information
I took my family to the Concert for Diana today at the new Wembley stadium, despite hearing about yesterday’s incidents at Glasgow and in London, despite hearing about Britain being put on its highest state of security alert, despite even knowing that there would be considerably increased levels of security at Wembley as a result. … Continue reading “Musing about risk management”
There’s no real point in having “Agile” IT departments in waterfall business contexts; in fact it isn’t even possible. Agile is first and foremost a mindset; it leads to a way of working; the way of working has a number of desirable outcomes; many of the desirable outcomes are manifested in successful IT implementations. But … Continue reading “Another sideways look at Agile”
I think it was sometime in 1983 when I first heard the term Quality First in a software context. Callow youth that I was then, I understood it and absorbed it in that narrow context; my view then could have been summarised as “An inspection culture encourages people to be slipshod, because they know someone … Continue reading “In the customer’s shoes”
Hugh asks how come there aren’t any opensource billionaires. Actually, I think there are a number of opensource billionaires. When hardware meant money, there were hardware billionaires. They made money Shifting Tin, and gave software away for free. And one day there wasn’t any margin left in hardware. Software ruled. When software meant money, there … Continue reading “Musing about opensource billionaires”
When I was a kid growing up in Calcutta, many things amazed me. [Actually, in this respect, not much has changed. I continue to be amazed by what I see. I guess I must be easy to amaze…]. One of the things that amazed me as a child was the way Indian mechanics kept things … Continue reading “On creativity and cannibalism and culture and DRM”