Richard Veryard on Computing

Roger is on the money here: the business model beh...

2011-09-12T04:36:00.679+01:00

Roger is on the money here: the business model behind SIs leads them to prefer larger projects that are prone to failure. Even worse, the people setting up the large project know that they won't be around in two years when it fails, so they have no incentive to set it up for success. Just as the people there at the end were not responsible for setting the project up so the failure is not their fault, and consequently they don't have much of a vested interest in the project's success or failure.

We can expect the same behaviour as long as we insist on tying pay and sales bonuses to project size. Sadly SaaS, which might have solved this problem, is heading the same direction as SaaS vendors try to be like Oracle and SAP, but in the cloud.

I think Richard is exactly right about the reasons...

2011-09-10T13:22:24.893+01:00

I think Richard is exactly right about the reasons we do big projects. We know they will fail, so why do we do them? The answer is easy. Follow the money.

For large consulting companies, it is far more profitable to do a big project that fails than a number of small projects that succeed. And for executives, it is far more prestigious to be in charge of a large project than a small project. Success doesn't matter, it is always easy to find somebody to blame later.

Things are not going to change until executives are rewarded not for the size of their projects, but for the success of their projects.

Roger says that big projects fail. There are many ...

2011-09-10T08:46:29.462+01:00

Roger says that big projects fail. There are many reasons for this, including the belief that big projects need big and powerful IT companies.

This belief has three consequences. Firstly, the big boys use their influence to make sure that projects (especially in the public sector) are as big and complicated as possible. Secondly, such projects are always awarded to the big boys. And thirdly, when the big boys fail, those responsible can console themselves with the lie that nobody else could have done any better.

With the advent of Web 2.0, crowd sourcing and oth...

2011-09-08T11:11:38.104+01:00

With the advent of Web 2.0, crowd sourcing and other techniques, I would like to think we will start to see newer project management tools for managing risk.

I am a big fan of the works of Slevin & Pinto, who developed a methodology to help predict the outcome of projects and the ‘reasons why’ for project failure based on critical success factors. See: http://goo.gl/AFpmo

We must monitor a number of critical success factors to ensure a successful outcome and avoid potential black swans. Alas history repeats itself over and over again and we do not use the ideas and tools available to us.

Scale and complexity is also a very significant issue that contributes to time, cost and risk.

Legacy system migrations as an example are a class of project that can be very challenging, as they are often large and can take significant time to complete e, g, often having to migrate sub-systems or transactions one at a time.

The world in terms of business priorities can change very fast.

I like the ‘Black Elephant’ concept that has been mentioned as with hindsight the reasons for failure are often obvious and with a better upfront understanding and communication many could have been avoided and hence my hopes for Web 2.0 tools where anyone within the hierarchy can speak up and shout out.

The language of "black swan" and "b...

2011-09-05T14:36:38.388+01:00

The language of "black swan" and "black elephant" is leading us away from the real issue: project failure. We know exactly what causes failure: size. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Big projects fail. Small projects succeed. It is really as simple as that.

So the answer is equally simple. We shouldn't do big projects. We should do small projects.

This means we need to focus our energies on understanding better ways of breaking large projects up into small projects.

Once we understand how to split large projects up into small projects, we won't have either black swans or black elephants. We will only have plain old boring vanilla IT projects that provide value to the business.

Nick may be right about the black elephants, but w...

2011-09-04T00:44:02.439+01:00

Nick may be right about the black elephants, but we need to be careful to distinguish between different logical categories here.

1. There are individual setbacks on any project. Such setbacks are very common, and any competent project organization should be able to contain them.

2. But some combinations of these setbacks may introduce complications that even the most experienced project organization may be ill-equipped to deal with. Each specific combination of these setbacks is very rare, which helps to explain why people are slow in recognizing them and clumsy in dealing with them.

3. But there is an extremely large number of possible combinations of these setbacks, of which a significant proportion produce significantly bad outcomes. Therefore even though the probability of a specific bad combination may be very small (black swan), the probability of some bad combination or other may be uncomfortably high (black elephant).

Richard, What Prof. Flyvbjerg seems to be describ...

2011-09-01T19:36:38.089+01:00

Richard,

What Prof. Flyvbjerg seems to be describing appears to be a "black elephant", not a "black swan." Project failures are quite common, even spectacular failures, so they can hardly be "black swans". A black elephant, on the other hand, is "an event which is extremely likely and widely predicted by experts, but people attempt to pass it off as a black swan when it finally happens."

For more on black elephants you can start here: http://bit.ly/n0gGyO .

-- Nick

Richard, "Of course passion and engagement a...

2010-11-26T20:24:56.040Z

Richard,

"Of course passion and engagement and the other things you mention are also worth striving for: although the CIO may not always be the most obvious person to lead general initiatives across the enterprise..."

I know from your other comments, posts, etc. that you indeed under stand the importance of passion, engagement, etc., which is why I was surprised it seemed so completely absent from the slideshare presentation. Especially given your comment above about the CIO. If anyone NEEDS to hear the message of the importance of balancing the rational with the passionate, its IT leadership, which seems all too left-brained!

Thanks Nick I am not suggesting that organization...

2010-11-25T17:03:28.387Z

Thanks Nick

I am not suggesting that organizational intelligence is the only thing worth striving for, merely that it provides a useful way of thinking about a broad range of technological and organizational initiatives.

Of course passion and engagement and the other things you mention are also worth striving for: although the CIO may not always be the most obvious person to lead general initiatives across the enterprise, it is certainly important to ensure that these values are respected and if possible furthered by IT initiatives.

It is not my intention to present organizational intelligence as an exercise in optimizing the enterprise-as-machine. In my post Organizations as Brains, I relay Gareth Morgan's distinction between instrumental (machine) rationality and substantial (human) rationality. True organizational intelligence must aim for the latter, and I have always regarded organizational intelligence as an initiative that requires organizational and cultural change (Theory Y, power-to-the-edge) as much as technological change.

Richard, Though I like many of the concepts you&#...

2010-11-25T16:08:43.356Z

Richard,

Though I like many of the concepts you've pulled together in OI, the way they are named, packaged, and presented feels like the enterprise becomes a machine and the people mere cogs. It feels like a description of the Borg.

Where is the passion, the creativity, the fun, the adventure, the solidarity, the entrepreneurship, the "enterprise" (as in "a purposeful or industrious undertaking, especially one that requires effort or boldness")?

I think the future of the enterprise and enterprise IT is in the direction of increased passion (incl. empathy, creativity, boldness), transparency, and sustainability/resilience. I see none of them highlighted here. I feel I have to read between the lines to find them (if they are there at all).

Consider Albert Borgmann, who we were recently discussing. In "Depth of Design" he calls for design to create/enable "engagement". Where is the deep "symmetry that links humanity and reality" in your description of Organizational Intelligence?

I'm delighted that you found my work in this a...

2010-11-22T11:59:06.757Z

I'm delighted that you found my work in this area useful in your own work. I'll look forward to our paths crossing.

Interesting information! Binarch.com provides &quo...

2010-11-20T04:12:38.465Z

Interesting information!
Binarch.com provides "Multiply ERP" Software for small to medium level businesses. Software is useful for Hose assembly manufacturers and distributors to manage or plan resources as well as inventory.

My article cites the need to tie enterprise 2.0 te...

2010-11-19T22:50:47.362Z

My article cites the need to tie enterprise 2.0 technologies to specific business processes as a challenge. I didn't pretend to have a solution to the problem. The only example for how to do so that I listed Nielsen's use of innovation management. Nielsen was focused on creating a process, though, not tying the technology to existing processes.

The link to Ray Wang's article is related to a different challenge: reducing rather than increasing information overload.

I posted my lengthy reply on my blog: http://bit.l...

2010-09-17T16:26:41.964+01:00

I posted my lengthy reply on my blog: http://bit.ly/bWfTbq .

I agree with Nick that I may have overstated the v...

2010-09-17T09:39:58.215+01:00

I agree with Nick that I may have overstated the value of semantic links over syntactic links, but my key point here is that in a world dominated by search engines and pervaded by SEO, the actual topography of the Internet results from a combination of syntactic links and semantic links. In other words, the Internet (product) is more than the technology (HTML).

Indeed, the SEO guys are often trying to use invisible semantic links to trick the search engines, and the Internet is filling up with the "dark matter" generated by these SEO efforts.

Many people collude with sites like Digg, and I often find I'm being taken to the Digg version of a story rather than the original. Okay, I can then navigate to the original, but clearly many people don't bother, and in the meantime Digg has clicked up yet another visitor.

My second point is that what we think we experience on the Internet is to some extent an erratically constructed illusion, emerging from a set of strong commercial interests. We have come a long way from Tim Berners-Lee's innocent vision of hypermedia. Microsoft's latest pronouncements on the Web cannot be divorced from Microsoft's own stake in the evolving topography of the Internet.

Richard, Sounds like the sites you visit provide m...

2010-09-17T00:01:42.987+01:00

Richard, Sounds like the sites you visit provide much lower quality "syntactic links" than the sites I visit. Sure, I run into all the problems you mention, but I run into them only infrequently. I find that syntactic links, especially those found in the blogs and tweets that I read on a daily basis usually take me right to where I want to go.

I find semantic linking via a search engine more susceptible to the litany of problems you describe. A perfect example is searching for quoted text, eg blog A contains a quote from blog B or news article B, but blog A doesn't provide a syntactic link.

So to find the original B post or article, I enter a snippet of the quoted text into Google. What do I often find? The first several results are cloned web sites set up by some SEO operator trying to draw traffic to their ads by reposting someone else's content.

And you have to admit that within sites like wikipedia, or netflix, or imdb, etc., syntactic links make for a powerful "browsing" (not searching!) experience. In those sites I feel like I'm really exploring lots of interesting connections--not searching.

If we understand "product" to refer to w...

2010-07-10T00:16:32.292+01:00

If we understand "product" to refer to what the customer/consumer buys and uses, then I think this can remain fairly static while the producer continues to innovate on improved materials, improved safety features or whatever - aspects that may be invisible to the customer or don't affect the customer's view of the identity of the product.

For example, a car manufacturer and its component supply partners may develop a new technology for brakes, which is perhaps safer or more environmentally friendly or just cheaper and more profitable. The improved technology is used for replacing the brakes on existing cars, as well as changing the bill of materials for cars currently in production. But this doesn't constitute a new product, and doesn't affect the product lifecycle.

And in the software industry, producer might produce a new product version every six months, but a bug-fix every two weeks. I'd see the fortnightly bug-fix as representing technological change (keeping up with the technological innovation from malware producers and other security threats) but not product change (because it doesn't introduce new user functionality, merely protects the original functionality). So that would be another example where I'd argue that some aspects of technological change are on a much faster cycle than the product itself.

In some industries, there has been enormous technological innovation behind the scenes, but the product remains the same. If I buy firewood from a local woodcutter, I am getting exactly the same product that I would have got five centuries ago - even though the woodcutter is now using technologies that his forefathers wouldn't have dreamed of - power saws and horseless carriages and order processing software and wolf location tracking. Maybe that's an extreme example, but then hi-tech isn't a representative example either.

"a product lifecycle can be extremely short, ...

2010-07-09T17:13:37.599+01:00

"a product lifecycle can be extremely short, but most of the underlying technology may be moving much more slowly. Or vice versa."

Richard, I'm having difficulty imagining the "vice versa": a product lifecycle that is extremely long, but most of the underlying technology is moving much more rapidly. If the underlying technologies are moving rapidly and they are being incorporated into the product, wouldn't the pace of the product lifecycle be at least as great as the slowest technology lifecycle incorporated by the product?

Any research in this area would be interesting, an...

2010-03-02T19:47:24.160Z

Any research in this area would be interesting, and I should be delighted if any masters student anywhere in the world wants to have a serious attempt at this, but what I'd really like to see is some independent body providing regular benchmarking and audit. Is this a job for the SEI or ESI?

I would dearly like to see the industry analyst co...

2010-03-02T14:34:04.095Z

I would dearly like to see the industry analyst community (well treating the community as a whole is always dangerous, but bear with me here, please) do historical analysis on itself. We see predictions of market sizes, adoption rates, technology futures. But rarely do we see a scorecard trumpeting the historical accuracy of these predictions.

Of course who would actually pay for such work? (sounds like a Masters' thesis in communications to me - especially as the research material is available in many University libraries.

I just think it would be fascinating and maybe sharpen up the analysis we see.

I anticipate that the big consulting and IT suppli...

2009-12-09T17:25:08.801Z

I anticipate that the big consulting and IT suppliers will start to do this - especially if they can make big money doing so. Of course we know they can, I am sure thatthere are documented cases of large companies finding fault with other large companies' architecture, design and implementations. So get the company to look at its own work with the same glee it uses to take down the work of others.

Thanks for that, surprisingly enough this has been...

2009-11-22T17:49:08.250Z

Thanks for that, surprisingly enough this has been circling in my head for the last week or so. Not a fan of Richard to be honest.

In regards to industry analysis you might want to check out this Niche Generator which provides comprehensive statistical and graphical information about any industry.

Cheers

Thanks for that, surprisingly enough this has been...

2009-11-22T17:48:55.353Z

Interesting to see how multi-faceted this topic is...

2009-11-05T15:13:34.172Z

Interesting to see how multi-faceted this topic is.

Going back to the Office product.... having been motivated to try and find out a little more about why Office 2007 is the way it is, I discovered this video presentation.
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX08/UX09
from Jensen Harris, the guy who was Group Program Manager of the Office 2007 User Experience team.

If you have a spare 90 minutes, you might find it quite illuminating, both in terms of what is discussed and what is not discussed.

The good news is they rejected a lot of ideas that would have been a lot worse!

They appear to have used Roger's idea, as there is a reference to something called 'Feature Affinity Research'.

My concern is that a significant main reason it was (and is) difficult to find things, is that the help system is not very helpful. If you don't use the precise terms that Microsoft use to describe your search then the chances are you won't find what you are looking for. This is still the case.

All, To add another angle - mostly along the compl...

2009-11-05T03:08:31.097Z

All,
To add another angle - mostly along the complexity/usefulness/ mathematical vectors (or would that be axes?? I wonder)
I have had a love/hate relationship with Powerpoint (regardless of version) - it is beguilingly easy to throw bullet points onto a slide (UI) and believe that they have deep meaning, when you havent thought through what it is you want to "simplify" / coalesce, and then be prepared to argue (in the debate sense) about. UI has to be accompanied by context and meaning to the viewer, I think! Then Chris Bird and this guy helped me start to work out the challenges..
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1
No final answers for me anyway - but more ingredients to the stew!