Even if you don’t play chess, you are likely to enjoy Gary Kasparov’s recent article The Chess Master and the Computer. Gary writes on the complicated subject of intelligence and the human mind in a clear, jargon free language. I would dare say his article is as incisive as the way he plays chess. For the Agilist, (and for anyone who takes interest in knowledge work), Gary cuts to the heart of the matter recounting the following episode: In 2005, the online chess-playing site Playchess.com hosted what it called a “freestyle” chess tournament in which anyone could compete in teams with other players or computers. Normally, “anti-cheating” algorithms are employed by online sites to prevent, or …
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Israel Gat
In my “Cutter Predicts…” post for 2013, I briefly made the point that a picture/image of an asset is merely one form of representing a physical asset. With services like Instagram, The Fancy and Wisemarkit drawing our attention these days, it is natural to think in terms of photos and/or photo streams. However, I contended: The nature of the phenomenon we are examining here is not restricted to photos/images. Rather, it is generic. Regardless of the nature of your company’s assets, any information about them that flows through the “pipes” of your company is potentially a productive asset. It can be utilized (once an API is exposed) through an app store that mines the information …
Dec 202012
The quips “You are what you eat” and “You are what you read” capture a universal truth: for better or worse your actions define your persona. As of 2013, I believe, “eat” and “read” in these quips will be superseded by “expose.” The APIs you choose to expose will define the kind of services you, your company or your company’s eco-system will be able to offer. It is going to be an “APIs beget services” pattern rather than “Services beget APIs.” If you think I am smoking something strong, take a look at the recent articles Cutter published on the API Economy (click here, here and here). Perhaps the most striking piece in these articles …
Dec 202012
How appropriate it is that on the eve of Christmas and New Year we add a consultant of the caliber of Professor Giancarlo Succi to Cutter’s Agile practice! Over the past couple of years the Agile practice has expanded its core expertise in software methods to include just about any aspect of software engineering that Cutter clients have interest in. We added consultants with deep expertise in Lean/Kanban, system engineering, complexity theory, devops and technical debt. We carry out technical due diligence and code audit engagements. And, in accord with Marc Andreessen’s quip “Software is eating the world,” various engagements evolve over time to address strategic aspects of product development. The recently published research report Introducing …
I have two purposes in mind writing this blog post: Bring to your attention a new Santa Fe Institute paper on technological progress. I consider it quite a remarkable paper. Provide guidance as to applying the findings reported in this paper. Bela Nagy et al have recently published a working paper entitled Statistical Basis for Predicting Technological Progress. Numerous intriguing observations are made in this paper, including the following comparison between Moore’s Law and Wright’s law: We discover a previously unobserved regularity that production tends to increase exponentially. A combination of exponential decrease in cost and an exponential increase in production would make Moore’s law and Wright’s law indistinguishable, as originally pointed out by Sahal. …
Sep 052012
In my recent Cutter Advisor “Reassessing Your Software Process,” I tried to shed light on the relative velocity of an in-house process v. that of related processes in the market. I stressed that I actually perceive the two as “twins” that can’t really be separated as they mutually affect each other. Furthermore, I expressed my conviction that the boundary between the firm and the market shifts nowadays not “only” as a function of cost of transactions[1], but as a function of the disparity in velocity of the software process inside the firm versus the velocity of related processes in the market. In response to my advisor, Peggy Drew, an Agile Program Manager with Omgeo, wrote …
In my first post in the Test-Driven Business (TDB) series, I took the liberty of being a little provocative, placing Planning after Ideation and Implementation as one possible way in which the three phases could be sequenced. This arrangement is illustrated in Figure 1. Figure 1: Cultivation Culture Obviously, Planning could precede Implementation and it might precede Ideation. The reason for my provisionally placing it last was to draw attention to the complicated interrelationship between the three phases, to the fact that in today’s markets linear order between the three can’t really be taken for granted. As a matter of fact, I would contend that sharp scholars have been observing that the order is not necessarily …
I recently had the pleasure of responding to the comments made by Voke in a press release about its new report that claims that companies do not understand costs of rework and cannot identify clear benefits of Agile. Brian Bloom of Computerworld Canada asked for my reaction, which was subsequently published in IT World Canada. Though I haven’t had the opportunity to read the full report, my impression is the report reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the core tenets of Agile. An Agile phrase you might want think about as you read the article is value delivery. Basically, I view Agile software as a triplet {Process, Output, Outcome}, where: Process=The way a self-organizing team works in accord with an Agile …
In my recent blog post Test-Driven Business, I started to examine the application of Test-Driven Development techniques to the business. The general idea is that software to development is like hypothesis to the business. We test in development in order to make certain that the software works correctly. Likewise, we test a hypothesis in the business in order to validate it. Just as we fix a line of code, we fix an invalid hypothesis. The model proposed for Test-Driven Business includes two core elements: View of the flow of activities in the firm as comprising three distinct phases: Ideation, Execution and Planning. Two strands that we try to merge within each phase. With these elements …
Jul 092012
Change used to be viewed, experienced and managed as a discontinuous phenomenon. A period of change was typically followed by a period of stability. Moreover, the general expectation was that the period of stability would last a much longer time than the time it took to assimilate change. Change nowadays is becoming continuous. Various Cutter Consortium clients deploy code dozens of times a day. Companies like Wisemarkit enable you to “open a shop in 60 seconds and fill it with products you believe in.” When new features are deployed every hour and e-shops can be formed on the fly, periods of stability in which you can catch your breath have for most practical purposes vanished. …
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