In 1987, Douglas Adams, most famously known as the author of the "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy, released a new book "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency." The book is quite entertaining, as is the show on BBC America by the same name. The premise of both is that
Read moreSince the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, standard approach to increasing the efficiency and profitability of business has been to standardize and automate systems and processes. Standardization and automation are pretty good tools, particularly for mechanical processes. But once you start looking at knowledge work and
Read moreAny organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. — Melvin E. Conway This is Conway's Law, first introduced to the world in 1967. And, like many "natural laws," it's almost tautological. A system will have components, and
Read moreVoltaire"Perfect is the enemy of good" is an adage attributed to Voltaire. It's certainly appropriate that a philosopher with concerns of aesthetics and quality should advance the idea. After all, nothing is ever perfect, and if you insist on only having what is perfect, you won't have anything at
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"Eating your own dog food" is a phrase that's been around a while in the tech industry, though it likely came from outside the industry. It's an important idea that you're building a tool for someone to use, which is supposedly better than the other tools available, so why wouldn't
Read moreBit Rot and Software Rot are observations digital content and software actually degrades over time, even though the software and content aren't physical. Of course, these things have to be stored on something, which will be physical and subject to degradation. But beyond the issues with storage media, there are
Read moreLike most dicta, finishing what you start is easy to say but hard to do. And we're aware of the difficulty both in our personal lives as well as in business. The reason is, like a dictum, it's always easier to talk about something in general than in laborious detail,
Read moreSome might consider incrementalism to be the ideal product development process. Given a product, all you need to do is focus on making the product incrementally better: add a feature, improve a feature, or reduce costs. Eventually, you'll get the product where it needs to go. Frequently, it is the
Read moreFirst jobs that most of us have involve manual labor and require little, if any, skill. These characteristics tend to go hand-in-hand of course. Without experience, there is no skill, and jobs that don't require any skill tend to be manual. My first paid jobs were mowing lawns and scrubbing
Read moreOne spring, quite a while ago, I was driving to a client's office and stopped at a major intersection. Across the intersection, at the far side of a lot for a warehouse, maybe a quarter mile distant, I saw a few men standing at the corner of a new warehouse.
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