Blog
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On Simplicity
The other day, I was talking to an artist friend and he related an anecdote about the fourteenth-century Italian painter Giotto. Apparently, Pope Boniface VIII
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Engineering Compared
Recently, several people have asked me to explain the difference between systems engineering and software engineering. My answer was rather longer than I expected… For
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On Cato
Recently I read an intriguing story of the orator and statesman, Cato the Elder, who lived around 2200 years ago. At the age of eighty,
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An Encouraging Thought
At a recent science meeting, I was listening to a speaker describe his researches into ancient solar eclipses. As these events are so striking and
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Evolutionary/Progressive Acquisition and Agile Approaches
A colleague of mine recently mentioned a service-acquisition approach that formalises one of the risk-reduction approaches used by Agilier. The approach, known as “Evolutionary Acquisition”
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Improving Customer-Supplier relationships
I’m always on the lookout for techniques to improve the sometimes-strained relationship between customers and suppliers. I recently came across an article describing an interesting
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An update to the Spiral Model
An interesting recent whitepaper has caught my attention recently Professor Barry Boehm and a colleague have updated Boehm’s venerable systems-development method known as the Spiral
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Columbus and avoiding systematic errors
I’m interested in historical sea-voyages of discovery, and I was intrigued to read that on Columbus’s 1492 voyage, his crew were ill at ease about
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Agile Projects: Impact on a Programme Office
I was asked recently to provide a few thoughts on running a programme office in agile software development environment. Agile teams run with considerably lower
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Agile EVM
One of the issues with running an agile project is gaining credibility with senior management. Much of can be achieved by using a good communication
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Manually over-riding business rules, or dealing with the unexpected
I was reading the other day about a curious incident on a plane flight that involved a problem with the airline’s business rules. A passenger
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Targets and Measures
I was privileged recently to attend a presentation by Malcolm Lewis. Malcolm is a practising chartered accountant but nowadays he combines his extensive “hard” business
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The Psychology of Change
I was privileged recently to attend a presentation by Malcolm Lewis. Malcolm is a practising chartered accountant but nowadays he combines his extensive “hard” business
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Employee-driven Corporate Change
I was recently facilitating a client’s requirements workshop and noticed that one of the attendees was swaying opinion by inappropriately evangelising technical solutions. Although some
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Goal Difference
I have recently been working on a system-engineering project where there were issues with team members having different understandings around the definition of “goal”. This
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Engaging Regulators
On large software projects, one group of stakeholders that I find are routinely missed are regulators. This group can be regarded as a proxy for
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Working together at different learning levels
In the past, I have led a number of projects where the team members have had very different levels of learning, making it difficult to
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Overzealous CRM
A colleague of mine had a recent example of what I term “overzealous CRM”. He was surfing a website and had logged in to his
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Aligning Methods to Accelerate Delivery
I’m often asked to intervene in large programmes within corporate governance environments. Typically, these often run for years, are documentation-heavy and find it difficult to
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Competitive Dialogue during Procurement
We’ve come across some recurring problems during interventions in large systems programmes. These programmes often run for years, are documentation-heavy and find it difficult to
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Undercover Documents
One of the fascinating things about consultancy is to see what information documentation employees find important, compared to what is officially published by the organisation.
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Kano and Moscow
Kano analysis was created by Professor Noriaki Kano in the 1980s and is used to optimise a product by categorising its features by perceived customer
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Service Credits vs Service Levels
I was recently involved in a discussion on the pros and cons of service credits. A service credit is a refund given by a supplier
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Military Strategy and Business Planning
“No plan survives contact with the enemy” is a phrase I’ve often heard used in a business context as an excuse for not planning properly
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Levels of Competency within Business Change Engagement
The theory of four levels of competency is well known in knowledge-transfer environments but it’s also worth considering in business change environments. The theory describes
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Sir Keith Park – Airborne Tactics and Agility
I was pleased to attend a recent presentation that referred to Sir Keith Park, a senior Royal Air Force commander in the Second World War
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Product Bloat
It’s well known that companies can claim market-share from competitors by offering a product that has fewer features than their rivals’ but that performs better
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Consultancy Ideas
A nice quote from the Brian Marick’s excellent website about his approach to new consultancy projects: “Before I visit, I have a phone conference with
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An Expensive Typo
Following a recent presentation, a debate started around the most expensive typo that people had encountered. My own contribution to the discussion was my experience
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Annotations and the Poetry of Science
Ada Lovelace: daughter of Byron, friend of Dickens, muse of Babbage…and the world’s first computer programmer – some thoughts for Ada Lovelace Day (24 March).
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On Hotels and Kano Analysis
As I have been staying in hotels rather often recently, I have noticed that Internet access varies widely from establishment to establishment; varying from almost-nil
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Challenging the Obvious
One of the challenges with obtaining the requirements for large corporate software systems is to obtain the same world-view with all parties involved. For example,
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On Creativity
Ordering some more Post-its the other day reminded me of the story of their discovery at the 3M company. The adhesive was invented nearly fifty
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