Friday, April 30, 2010

Evolution of Business Communication

Steps in corporate culture transformation:
  • Couriering around printed documents
  • Faxing documents to each other
  • Emailing documents as attachments
  • Emailing links to documents on sharepoint
  • Emailing links to enterprise wiki articles
  • Collaborating in the article and notified of changes via email
  • Collaborating in the article and seeing RSS updates in the enterprise portal

Also somewhere in there is the crazy scenario where I get email a PDF that was clearly created by someone who scanned a printed copy of a PowerPoint presentation.  I guess that worse, yet, would be a PDF created by scanning a printed copy of a wiki article.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Complexity = Agile Simplicity

I'm a major advocate of traditional simplicity principles like KISS, YAGNI, DRY, the Unix Philosophy, etc.  I'm also very interested in complexity and solving large complex problems.  It occurred to me during an all day "fix this process problem" meeting today that the ideas of complexity and simplicity aren't actually antonyms.  Sure, by definition, they are, but I think the paradox in that comparison is that perhaps complexity can be defined as simplicity that changes over time.

My perception of complex problems is that given the examples of any one particular moment in time, the situation can be easily dissected, analyzed, documented, and understood.  Take a sample from the next moment in time and the same is true.  Try to combine that collection of understandings into a generalization that can be applied to other past and future points in time and the problem suddenly becomes complex.

One of the observations we get from agile development is that solutions will be more correct, given the flexibility to adjust to customer needs versus following a previously defined historical specification.  Agility is the ability to adjust to change.

Therefore, complex problems should be solvable by solutions that are simple and agile.  Solutions do not have to be complex.

We run into challenges designing agile solutions, though.  Many traditional solution design tools often call for static process flow diagrams, swim lane control charts, concrete data models, class diagrams, etc.  I think that some of the behavioral object oriented patterns give us some clues on how to introduce agility into solutions, but understanding when to apply those (and how to apply them within some technologies) takes creativity and experience. 

I think that introducing that same kind of solution agility into human processes is also very challenging.  Often, we want clearly defined instructions and flow charts to instruct individuals on exactly what to do.  The only variation being a Madlib style fill-in-the-blank.  Perhaps we need more "and then a miracle occurs" steps in our complex processes.  And perhaps that's both acceptable and desirable in some processes.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Digging Holes

The following parable is adapted from one that I was forwarded by a friend this week...  It seemed a good analogy for a poor IT Service Management philosophy.


Two IT directors changed jobs and were working for the city public works department.  One would dig a hole and the other would follow behind her and fill  the hole in. They worked up one side of the street, then down the other, then  moved on to the next street, working furiously all day without rest, one director digging a hole, the other director filling it in again.

An onlooker was amazed at their hard work, but couldn't understand what they were doing. So he asked the hole digger, "I'm impressed by the effort you two are putting in to your work, but I don't get it -- why do you dig a hole, only to have your partner follow behind and fill it up again?"

The hole digger wiped her brow and sighed, "Well, I suppose it probably looks odd because we're normally a three-person team. But today the guy who plants the trees called in sick."

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Personal Best



Today's run...  The Go! St. Louis Half Marathon
My first official race!

Distance: 13.1 miles
Time: 2:34
Place: 7,520th

It was awesome!