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Crisis Over

January 30, 2011 3 minute read

The Noodle Tree So I have a question, or at least I think I do, because maybe the answer is obvious and any sense of there being a question is redundant. Why do so many articles on software development these days (and for some time) start with outlining how truly awful, and late, and expensive it always is? I’ve said it too, often. But it’s getting boring. Statistically, if you were to parachute into a randomly selected IT developme...

Ungoverning the Business

November 13, 2010 8 minute read

If there’s one aspect of enterprise IT guaranteed to get the dander up it’s Standards and Governance. Some time ago I wrote a short piece on governance called The Governance Apparition making the point that governance should never really be seen as separate and distinct from ‘doing things’. If a company has a process for ‘doing things’ and an internal body (usually architecture) tries to ‘govern’ the outputs of that process the gover...

Hammer Time

May 17, 2010 9 minute read

Whenever anyone gets caught up with, or overly excited about, a software product, design pattern, or piece of technology, the phrase most often used to warn us over-using it is: To a man1 with a hammer, everything looks like a nail It’s a tired and worn out phrase but, on the surface at least, it seems like good advice. One tool cannot do all jobs, there are no silver bullets. It’s not wise to artificially constrain your effort...

Strained Relationships

November 3, 2009 13 minute read

About four years ago I sat in a meeting that had finished early. We were chatting away and the subject turned, as it always does, to the lamentable state of IT. In the preceding weeks I’d asked finance to run me off a number of reports showing just what we were spending on various aspects of our integration architecture. They made pr...

Law and Order

August 29, 2009 17 minute read

In the technology justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the architects who investigate standards and the developers who commit the offences. These are their stories. <doink doink> INT. COURTROOM - MORNING The case before us has troubled me deeply over recent years. It’s a question that periodically pops up in various online forums and one which often invites heated debate - probably why it never seems to achieve any sense of resoluti...