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Horse Carts and DVDs
I commented some time earlier on the new trend that some companies are adopting, of going back to earth from the cloud. That was about the choices that face individual companies today, and the tradeoffs of being in the cloud versus on-premise. Today’s essay is about something else. It is about the inevitibility of the… Continue reading
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Buyer Beware
This is a follow-up to my post on fixed-price contracts written some time ago. It was a surprisingly popular post, and I received some interesting feedback and many new ideas. Now procurement matters. Most enterprises buy far more than they build, and that isn’t going to change soon. Getting a decent bang for the buck… Continue reading
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Narayan, Narayan
Mr. Murthy has stepped into a lively debate with the 70-hr-week declaration. He’s not the only old man to ask the young to work harder, of couse — there’s Jack Ma espousing the 9–9–6 rule (which is 2 hrs more than Mr. Murthy’s ask), Elon Musk asking workers to sign on to long hours or take a… Continue reading
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The Great Productivity Debate
McKinsey just released a study on measuring developer productivity, and stepped into a minefield of protest from influential developers like Kent Beck or Joel Spolsky. The criticism universally was that McKinsey has read the literature on DORA and SPACE and other metrics but not actually gained any direct understanding — a doctor who’s read the books but… Continue reading
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Price-Fixing
I’ve done a lot of projects in my time, both as a buyer and as a supplier, and most of them go badly. Having spent half a lifetime thinking about why this is so, my particular ire is aimed today at a very popular construct. Fixed-price IT contracts are everywhere. Buyers love them because it… Continue reading
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Reliability on the cloud
When a grandmother’s foodblog has better availability than that expensive business website, CIOs feel worse than foolish — they feel incompetent. Better to join the bandwagon of 99.99999% reliability. I’m a declared cloud enthusiast but I’ve spent enough time with complex setups on and off the cloud to have seen the warts on both sides.… Continue reading
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Dancing in the Cloud
I mentioned in my previous post that there are only five reasons to move to the cloud. Number one on that list is flexibility. Everyone tells you the cloud will give us a lot of flexibility; that you can dance there in a way it cannot do on-premise (and not just because you’re a paunchy middle-aged… Continue reading
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Flying into the Clouds
A few days ago I gave sage commentary on leaving the cloud. Today, it’s about going into the cloud instead. I’ve been living with my head in the clouds for a long time now. As a fledgling startup from before AWS, I could only look on in envy as a cohort of youngsters flashed a credit… Continue reading
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Leaving the Cloud
There’s much talk now about how the cloud is passé, and just an expensive way to send people into space really. A blog post by David Heinemeier Hansson posted some time ago about how he thinks the cloud is largely new coats of paint on old stuff and thus wants to leave it behind at… Continue reading
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Banana Peels & Getting Things Done
A team of smart driven people get together in a room, all focused on a project and eager to progress. Two months of meetings later, the project is still drifting along, not quite getting to closure. Have you wondered why this happens? Why do seemingly smart people with the best of intentions slip on the… Continue reading
About Me
This blog is about my ramblings on technology and management, gathered from years of trying to do many wonderful and fascinating things with technology. Most importantly I find the interactions of humans with computers fascinating – how the to extract use from computers in their various forms, from washing machines to large language models.
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