Sarquol Ltd

I liked this post and thought it was worth sharing on the Sarquol site… it is a semi-serious look at ways to keep momentum when the going gets tough.

WIMMING YOUR WAY THROUGH A HARD JOB

http://blog.theitjobboard.co.uk/2010/03/wimming-your-way-through-a-hard-job/

Enjoy.

I recently needed to consider the state of a System Architecture and consider the changes likely to be needed over time. Thus, I was trying to produce a “Roadmap” for the architecture into the future. The challenge was that the future is uncertain. Some items can be planned for, and others are dependent on the way the business and technological environments develop. These developments can be considered to be the product of various “forces” playing out in the environment of the system. How then can you address this complexity? Read the rest of this entry »

Defining estimation scenarios

The first stage in the steps to estimating a project was defined to be the definition of the scenarios to be supported in the solution.  The scenarios should be defined at as low a level of detail as possible, with the following diagram showing the example scenario definition.

Scenario definition

Definition of the scenarios sizing

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If I consider creative problem solving Iwould usually think about tree hugging, and weird techniques to be at one with the universe. It doesn’t seem to fit well with my idea of IT problems which need engineering solutions. I have, however, found that the use of such techniques will often lead to a better overall solution than simply digging into the technical detail. Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently talking to a client was concerned about the development processes used within their organisation. This is a challenge that has been tackled by many organisations and one which the Software Engineering Institute looked at years ago and produced their Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to help with.  I stated that I would find and send them a summary article to help. The challenge really started at that point. Read the rest of this entry »

I ran into this article recently:

How to be a Problem Solver
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2009/how-to-be-a-problem-solver/

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The promise of cloud computing is the ability to scale to meet any demand level almost instantly, saving money along the way by only ever needing the power available that is required now. To do this it uses a combination of virtualisation and grid-based clustering technology. The potential is enormous. To spice it up further then by using a platform such as Gigaspace it is possible to improve performance and scalability to a degree that thousands of transactions a second are possible, based on in-memory database technology. Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently asked to comment on the concepts of project assurance, solution assurance and turn-around. The following is a summary of my response. Read the rest of this entry »

Gartner is trying to help us all out with our strategy again, or maybe this is an early “next year prediction” article. Either way Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies have been published: here. To be honest, my biggest surprise is that there isn’t something newer in here. They seem to have selected only technologies that are relatively mature, and some of them are what I would consider to be positively mainstream. I suppose that in recommending strategy to major corporate customers they are not going to select technology on the bleeding edge. This selection is more “look what you should have been doing this year” than “get on this band wagon now”.