You've come up with the perfect process, written a summary document which explains what people must do at each stage and got the go-ahead from your boss! Fast forward to three months later and your colleagues haven't read your document, some are still working through back doors to get things done and an annoying few are ignoring the new process completely. Here are four reasons why it might not have gone to plan...
Author: James
Mapping the present and vector based measures
I'm spending the Easter weekend in Berlin but in order to get here I had to go on a journey first. This Involved both trains and planes with various checkpoints in between. There was always a destination in my mind and there was an element of planning required to work out how to get here. … Continue reading Mapping the present and vector based measures
Attractors in the dating industry
We could approach dating as the problem of whittling down seven billion people to one we want to partner with. The rise of technology has produced new ways of finding this person - from swiping and 'liking' to artificial intelligence algorithms capable of matching based on similarities. In this posts I'm going to apply ideas … Continue reading Attractors in the dating industry
Three terrible responses to the diversity question
Whenever I interview for a new role, I always make sure to quiz the company on it's level of diversity. The response gives great insight into what a company values beyond the work they deliver. Here I want to share the three worst responses I've hadt and why I think diversity in the workplace is … Continue reading Three terrible responses to the diversity question
Mapping Culture with Archetypes
I feel as though culture is seen as the holy grail for creating a successful agile environment and I agree that having a vision of where you want your company's culture to be is important. However, setting off in a direction without understanding where you are in the first place could end up being more … Continue reading Mapping Culture with Archetypes
Chaos and Innovation
The word 'chaos' is used in the Cynefin framework to describe a domain where the agents of a system have no constraints. While the chaotic domain can be a bad place to be, in the right circumstances it can be used to fuel innovation. Liz Keogh has previously posted about isolated idea generation and Cognitive Edge … Continue reading Chaos and Innovation
White paper on the secret sharing implementation in Hashicorp’s Vault
Securing a secret, whether it's a password, sensitive information or a cryptographic key, is hard to get right. Hashicorp's Vault attempts to remove the headaches by providing simple APIs no matter what form the storage back-end takes. I have just finished a report which looks into part of the implementation of Vault to show the mechanisms used to protect user's … Continue reading White paper on the secret sharing implementation in Hashicorp’s Vault
Systems Thinking, Complexity Thinking and Anthro-Complexity
I had another trip to Amsterdam this month to attend Dave Snowden's course: Cynefin and Sense-Making. I'll be making a series of posts about what I learnt. I'll start by comparing systems thinking and complexity thinking and by giving an introduction to the field of study that Dave is calling Anthro-Complexity. In systems thinking, analysis of … Continue reading Systems Thinking, Complexity Thinking and Anthro-Complexity
Stop trying to solve hard problems!
Earlier this week I had a discussion about the running time of an algorithm used to test a method. This got me thinking about one of my favourite areas of computer science - computational complexity. We can use complexity theory to split problems into classes. Understanding some of these classes can help us to recognise when … Continue reading Stop trying to solve hard problems!
Velocity 2015, 2: System Design = Organisation Design
This is the second of a series of posts covering what I learnt at Velocity Amsterdam 2015. During the second day, Mike Amundsen of CA Technologies shared his insights into the works of Melvin Conway. While Conway's Law may be well known, it is only stated as the thesis of his article "How do committees invent?". Mike showed that … Continue reading Velocity 2015, 2: System Design = Organisation Design
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