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Category Archives: agile

Energising the Agile Way of Working brand and mindset

10 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by Martyn Jones in agile, agile way of working, agile@scale, business strategy, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, IT strategy, Strategy

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On my way to Léon

Martyn Richard Jones

Brussels 10th June 2019

Today I want to talk with you about energising the Agile Way of Working brand.

Sadly, the Agile Way of Working movement seems to be temporarily on the wane. The adoption rate of AWOW has not risen in line with expectations. It’s stuck in the doldrums between Scylla and Charybdis. Which makes for frowns all around.

But, me being me, I didn’t leave it at that. That’s a challenge, right there! Let’s go for it! Let’s turn those frowns upside-down

As result, I searched for a way to help the Agile@Scale crowd out, and I eventually came up with ten amazing pieces of incredible advice on how to easily make ‘Agile Way of Working’ truly something worth having around.

So, here we have it:

  1. First, change its name from the Agile Way of Working to the Agile Way of Whacking Off (Agile WOWO), you know, a touchy-feely way to “sex up” requirements. Bush and Blair style.
  2. Epics will be referred to as Dodgy Dossiers, User Stories will become Curated Jokes and Sprints will become Streaks.
  3. People working on Streaks will be known as Streakers, chapter members will be known as Schleppers and guild members will be known as Schmucks, everyone else will be referred to as Bernie or Helen.
  4. Every morning Dodgy Dossier Owners must repeat the term “Agile Operating Model” until they puke their guts out.
  5. All Scrum and Kanban boards are be replaced with life-sized wack-a-mole models.
  6. Only those kitted out as My Little Pony or Princess Line can use coloured post-it notes.
  7. Anyone caught using the names Google, Spotify, Netflix or Zappos.com will be denied the oxygen of publicity.
  8. Anyone evidenced repeating the terms “by design”, “learning journey” and “minimum viable product” will be denied the oxygen of oxygen.
  9. Anyone caught using comic images of rockets, astronauts or planets (including the sun) anywhere in their “content” will be forever referred to as a feckin space-cadet.
  10. If you can’t defecate rainbows on demand then you have no right being involved in Agile at Scale or the Agile Way of Whacking Off.

There you have it. Ten jolly and sensible policies for a happy world of Agile at Scale and Agile WOWO.

Many thanks for reading,

This is Martyn Jones of goodstrat.com – THE GOOD STRATEGY COMPANY

Until next time.

Contact me at martyn dot jones at goodstrat dot com

Deep learning; shallow understanding.

02 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by Martyn Jones in agile, Artificial Intelligence, business strategy, deep learning, Good Strategy, IT strategy, iterations, Strategy

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Deep learning, shallow understanding.

The original article is here: https://goodstrat.com/2019/05/11/deep-learning-and-shallow-understanding/

Agile at Scale is bullshit by design

28 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by Martyn Jones in agile, agile@scale, All Data, Architecture, Assets, awareness, behaviour, business strategy, Creativity, Dogma, IT strategy, Strategy, structured intellectual capital, Value

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cropped-p4010326.jpgMartyn Ricard Jones

Bruxelles 28th May 2019

To begin at the beginning

To paraphrase the great Bob Hoffman. Just when you thought that if evangelists for Agile were to generate one more ounce of bullshit the entire fucking solar system would explode, what do they do? Exceed expectations.

And how did they do that? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Agile at Scale with all the miscellaneous, spiced-up and vainglorious crap-on-the-side that accompanies it.

Continue reading →

Learning journey – Agile@Scale – The video

22 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by Martyn Jones in 4th generation Data Warehousing, agile, agile@scale

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Learning to hate Agile-at-scale

11 Saturday May 2019

Posted by Martyn Jones in 4th generation Data Warehousing, agile, All Data, Architecture, business, business strategy, Methodology, Process, project management, scrum

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StupidToScaleAfilonius Rex

Cordoba, 12th May 2019

Ladies and gentlemen, the performance is about to start!

In 1998, as Programme, Product and Competence Centre manager at Hewlett-Packard, I signed the Agile Manifesto.

At that time, I had been using elements of the Agile-method mindset for the best part of sixteen years.

Previously, in 1995 I was trained and certified in Iterations, an iterative and agile-like methodology for building, maintaining and expanding data warehouses and data marts. Continue reading →

Getting Agile Right

17 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by Martyn Jones in 4th generation Data Warehousing, agile, Ask Martyn, business strategy, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstrat, IT strategy, Marty does, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, Strategy

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Image10Martyn Richard Jones

Madrid, 16th April 2017

I think Agile has its place, especially in the world of software application development, especially in building the kind of software that businesses frequently use in the peripheral aspects of their day-to-day operations.

Done right, Agile can make the difference between a great success and a painful failure. Done badly, and you might suffer a worse fate than a badly applied Software Development Life Cycle such as Waterfall. Done well, and Agile will oil the wheels of the machine that gets things done.

Continue reading →

Big Data Predictions for 2017

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by Martyn Jones in 4th generation Data Warehousing, accountability, agile, All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, pig data, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Mount_Everest_as_seen_from_Drukair2_PLW_editBig Data Predictions for 2017

Prologue

You want Big Data predictions for 2017?

You’ve got ’em!

These are my Big Data, Data Warehousing and Analytics extrapolations for 2017. They are based on extensive, exhaustive and enigmatic work carried out by top-notch researcher gurus at Cambriano Energy, between December 2015 and December 2016.

So, stick with us as we survey the landscape that will be Big Data in 2017. Continue reading →

The Million-Dollar Big Data Briefing

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Martyn Jones in 4th generation Data Warehousing, agile, Big Data, Consider this, Data Lake, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones

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Tags

All Data, Analytics, Big Data

If you enjoy this piece or find it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Many thanks, Martyn.

Big Data, together with Cloud computing, the Internet of Things and Machine Learning, are topics that are very much to the fore in contemporary trends in Information Management. But is Big Data really the revolution that people have been waiting for or is it simply about the next steps in the evolution of business data architecture and management?  Continue reading →

Consider this: Big Data and the Curse of the Temple of Java

13 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by Martyn Jones in agile, Big Data, Consider this, java

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Tags

agile, Big Data, java, refractor

r019

“Rats, rats for sale. Get your rats. Good for rat stew, rat soup, or the ever-popular ratatouille”. – Mel Brooks

Hold this thought: Everything that the Templars of Java touch turns to dreck.

In a small and timeless village in misty and mountainous Transylvania, the locals mourn the passing of yet another victim.

On the wind swept beaches of a wintry Costa Blanca, the reverberating voice of childish despair is barely perceptible through the crashing of the waves on the grey, cold and craggy rocks.

In Victorian London, a hobgoblin of indescribable and vacuous insanity stalks the silent and rain drizzled streets.

Cracking this curse will take more than the combined powers of Clint Eastwood, Mel Brooks and Homer Simpson.

A spectre haunts the face of Europe, the spectre of Big Data and the Curse of the Temple of Java.

Everything that the disciples of the Temple touch turns to blah. Everything that the disciples call their own has been blagged from elsewhere.

Take the very language of Java itself, an authentic eccentricity amongst computing languages. If Java code were real coffee grains, it would be used to make the shittiest coffee in the history of humankind.

Given the vast amounts of knowledge and experience that was washing around IT at the time of Java’s hatching, it must be considered to be the most demonic aberration of a programming language ever conceived by woman, man or beast.

“Cats have a scam going – you buy the food, they eat the food, they go away; that’s the deal.” – Eddie Izzard

If ever there was an excuse in IT for failing to deliver or for delivering badly and late, then Java is your friend.

In the hands of the right people, Java can turn a one year and $3M project into a five year and $300M project, and still not deliver anything of use.

Yet magically, and out of the people directly responsible for these debacles, no one is sacked, sued or busted as a result, the incumbent supplier either quietly leaves the scene or is rewarded for their gross incompetence and dishonesty, and in many cases a success is hailed, even if that success looks remarkably like abject failure. It is totally false, absolutely dishonest and thoroughly unprofessional. But that’s what we have, like it or not.

Java sucks, it is a horrid language, aesthetically and functionally, it’s a piecemeal pile of do-do, a dirty old ragbag of ‘object-oriented’ hacks, logical aberrations and lagoons of missing structure, dysfunctional rationality and discontinuity – and that that’s not just my opinion:

“I spent several months programming in Java. Contrary to its authors’ prediction, it did not grow on me. I did not find any new insights – for the first time in my life, programming in a new language did not bring me new insights. It keeps all the stuff that I never use in C++ – inheritance, virtuals – OO gook – and removes the stuff that I find useful.” – Alexander Stepanov

“Claiming Java is easier than C++ is like saying that K2 is shorter than Everest.” – Larry O’Brien

“I would rather use Java than Perl. And I’d rather be eaten by a crocodile than use Java.”

“If I wanted plastic scissors I’d use Java. Give me my scalpel back.”

And for the record, even Linus Torvald hates it.

But if you thought Java was a horrid, hype infested viper’s den of programming bad practice and hyper-hype, just wait until you see what’s behind Hadoop.

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes. – Mel Brooks

Hadoop must be the biggest piece of technical and rhetorical bullshit in the history of data management.

Repackage a series of Unix primitives (cat, grep, awk, cut, sed, wc) built on top of parallel Linux or Unix. Dress it up, take it out on the town, and call it the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is nothing less than a brazen and blatant con. Want to count words? Use wc (Unix wordcount).

Let me repeat that, using other words. If you made a compilation of extracts from the works of the world’s greatest thinkers and authors, randomised replacement of some of the words, and produced and published this compilation, as all your own work, what would you call that?

So back to when this happens, frequently, in IT.

This might fool the foolish who don’t have the first idea about anything technical, objective or rational beyond whatsapp, kiddy scripting and HTML, but if you have a clue, you know that this is a scam, a very big one. It is also dishonest.

So how do they (the scammers) get away with it?

Easy. You have bad apples everywhere. But there is another reason. For well over a decade the world of IT has become the dumping ground for the stupid, lazy and indolent kids of the comfortable middle-classes and also a hunting ground for unscrupulous wide-boys.

Listen up parents!

Do you think that your kid is way too thick to be a doctor, scientist, lawyer, researcher, professor, teacher, statistician, health worker, politician, bus driver, street cleaner, entrepreneur, sandwich maker or economist?

Your kid has no creativity beyond messing with their food?

Your kid has no sporting ability apart from skills at gaming?

The only academic ability your kid has is your money?

No worries!

IT for you, my son!

So if that’s you, then lap it up. Real knowledge and experience will not come your way, but you will learn the dogma of the Temple of Java, and you will be able to repeat it to perfection, just like Pavlov’s favourite dog.

You will learn to be be pliable, usable and even more gullible. You will know bugger all about practical IT or the architecture, evolution and application of information technology and data, and vendors will love you for it, for you will be just an extension of their idea of increasing the profit rate.

This is how IT business has become the refuge of liars, cheats, pimps and the chronically dopey, and this is why Java and Hadoop have become the ultimate expression in programming and data. It’s a geeky Greek tragedy being played out as we speak. O tempora, o morons.

But it isn’t just about Java and Hadoop. Everything the Templars of Java touch turns to dreck. Whether we are looking at aberrations and failures in rapid joint application development, end user computing, database design (refractor this, dimwits!), or solutions and domain architecture, and more, the dead cold hand of the Java Mafia is invariably behind it.

And now, to top it all off, the miserable Templars of Java want to take over and displace Bill’s Data Warehousing. You couldn’t make it up.

So, who will save the IT world from the evil doers?

To paraphrase Homer Simpson: I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save us, Wonderwoman.

Thank you so much for reading.

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