Posted on August 25, 2010.
Written by Richie
One of the principles of the Scrum approach to agile development and project management is self-organisation. The benefit(s) that occur when a team self-organises include improved performance and creativity within the team.
It is important to remember that when a team is self-organising, it is still working towards the goals of the organisation, so the direction of the team is set by the organisation’s management. Self-organising is not the same as self-serving. A quote from Philip Anderson in the Biology of Business which I read in Mike Cohn’s blog sums it up;
Self-organization does not mean that workers instead of managers engineer an organization design. It does not mean letting people do whatever they want to do. It means that management commits to guiding the evolution of behaviors that emerge from the interaction of independent agents instead of specifying in advance what effective behavior is.
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Posted on August 19, 2010.
Written by Richie
Technical debt is a metaphor that refers to the consequences of allowing low quality software coding to go unchanged. It’s one type of debt that Nama won’t be managing!
Ward Cunningham, one of the pioneers of extreme programming, coined the phrase to convey the potential risks of taking short-cuts when developing and testing code for an application. Ward’s first law states that lowering code quality lengthens development time. Continue reading…
Posted on July 31, 2010.
Written by Richie
I recently attended a recent PMI Ireland chapter seminar on the use of agile principles. The scrum section of the talk focused on the differences between being a project manager and a scrummaster. Nigel Baker from AgileBear Ltd gave a very entertaining presentation that demonstrated how a scrummaster works and the differences between traditional project management and scrum. There are two points that I want to elaborate on from Nigel’s talk. 
Don’t disturb me
The scrum process provides for planning at different phases of a project including;
- Release planning
- Sprint backlog planning
This enables the delivery team and product owner, facilitated by the scrummaster to define product features with user stories and related definition(s) of ‘done’ for each sprint. With this in hand, the delivery team can achieve momentum to deliver working software with no interference.
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Posted on July 26, 2010.
Written by Richie
In my consultancy work with different organisations, I get asked what makes for an effective ICT strategy. Also on a related basis, is there a difference between an IS strategy and an IT strategy? In this blog, I give my 2c on these two related topics. 
ICT – Supporting and driving the business
The ICT strategy must support both the organisation’s business strategy and also show how ICT can be used to provide opportunities for new ways of doing business. These two characteristics are not necessarily the same thing. An organisation’s business strategy shows where the organisation is going and the reasons for the direction being taken. It is important that the ICT strategy supports the objectives as set out by the business strategy, but also that the ICT strategy should provide for innovation and showing new opportunities for doing business.
This is a dual objective that should be at the core of an effective ICT strategy. It is important to remember that an organisation, even one selling technology products/services, wants solutions that demonstrate practical value, rather than just systems.
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Posted on July 7, 2010.
Written by Richie
What does it take to be a great scrummaster – now that’s a question !
In browsing some scrum related topics recently, I came across an interesting document by Michael James in which he lists characteristics and tasks that scrummasters can leave out in the day to day workings of a sprint. What I like about this checklist is it’s format, where the tasks and characteristics are grouped by interactions between the scrummaster and the product owner, the delivery team and the wider organisation. I have listed some of what I think are the more interesting points in the checklist. 
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Posted on June 30, 2010.
Written by Richie
Ofcom is the communications regulator in the UK and would be the equivalent of Comreg in Ireland. Recently, as part of the UK’s Digital Economy Act, Ofcom have prepared a draft code of conduct for ISP’s on filesharing.
There are some interesting points to note from this draft code in relation to the possible preparation of a similar code in Ireland. It embodies the main theme of ‘three strikes and you’re out’, in that a broadband subscriber who having recieved two prior warnings for sharing files online, will find that on a third warning, their details will be included on a list that will be made available to content providers. The content providers can then decide to use this information to make a claim against the subscriber. Continue reading…
Posted on June 28, 2010.
Written by Richie
It is well known that the use of mobile devices for accessing the web and online services is increasing. In addition, the use of social applications from mobile devices such as smartphones is also increasing, with Apple and Google platforms being the leaders. 
With the increasing use of mobile devices as the ‘device of choice’ to assess the web, it was interesting to read a recent blog by Jakob Nielsen on a preliminary usability assessment of the iPad including some comparisons between the iPad and iPhone. Here are some of the main points that I gleaned from the assessment and what it means for usability with mobile devices.
Continue reading…
Posted on June 23, 2010.
Written by Richie
On Wednesday 16th June last, I attended a Best Connected event organised by Enterprise Ireland on the topic of “Managed Services & Solutions – partnerships in the Cloud”. The objective of Best Connected is to link Ireland’s innovators with the World by facilitating contacts between indigenious business, multinationals, third level institutions and the public sector and ultimately creating export lead employment.
The seminar featured a number of presenters who spoke about the characteristics of cloud based services and the potential opportunities for service providers. Some of the key messages that I took away from the seminar included;
- Cloud computing is an evolving paradigm which provides on-demand services that can help companies reduce costs and facilitating the speedy delivery of new technology
- As cloud computing is still evolving, companies are using and/or assessing computing services with due consideration for risk management and operational stability
- Cloud service providers can use certifications such as ISO 27001 or ITIL to differentiate themselves in the market
- There are opportunities for new products or services to be delivered in the areas of software to manage:
- computing tasks across multiple infrastructure service platforms to facilitate scaling, availability and deployment tasks
- storage of data across multiple cloud platforms
- integration between different cloud services on different platforms
- There was a consenus that cloud computing is being hyped and that one of the challenges is to continue to demonstrate the practical business benefits that it can enable
The presentations, the panel Q&A and the networking before and after the event ensured a good discussion was had in relation to the future potential of managed cloud services. Further details and links to the presentation are available at Bestconnected.ie
Posted on May 30, 2010.
Written by Richie
Cloud computing is getting increasing attention as more and more companies are availing of cloud based services and as the maturity of cloud services evolves.
Know what you want from your solution
As with any new technology trend, it’s important to remember that certain basic principles apply, particularly from a customer’s perspective, when they are assessing the costs and benefits of cloud based services. In this post, I would like to cover some of these basic principles, in the areas of features/requirements analysis, security and regulation.
In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of a business understanding the requirements and features that they wanted from an IT solution before getting too far into the selection process. I think it’s important to remember that just because a particular IT solution is delivered using cloud based services, if it doesn’t have the features that a business requires, then the use of cloud based services won’t make up that gap.
Continue reading…
