Category Archives: business strategy

STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – The Guardian

24 Tuesday Feb 2026

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

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Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Wednesday 25th February 2026.

Seven years on, the verdict is in, and it’s not flattering. Back in 2019, in a Brussels-fuelled rant channelling the incomparable Bob Hoffman, I declared Agile at Scale the next frontier of IT bullshit: immature, ill-conceived, supercilious, and emphatically not agile. It killed communication with jargon, turned criticism into heresy, and mangled history by ignoring what actually worked. I called it a cultish Frankenstein of Scientology zeal, Vatican pomp, and authoritarian quirks – all wrapped in vainglorious slide decks.

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CEO BRIEFING: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – Remastered and Revisited – 2026/01/27

07 Saturday Feb 2026

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Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Bruxelles, 28th May 2019

To begin at the beginning

To paraphrase the great Bob Hoffman. Just when you feared that Agile evangelists might produce even more nonsense, they surprise you. What do they do? Exceed expectations.

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

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CEO BRIEFING: What Every CEO Needs to Know About Big Data – Revisited – 2026/01/26

07 Saturday Feb 2026

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business, Business Intelligence, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Inform, educate and entertain., pig data, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

New York City, 18th January 2017

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Blue sky for professional data architecture and management

Scope

I’ll make this short, sweetish and to the point.

These are the arguments that CEOs need to know about Big Data.

It was written for CEOs and those who provide independent advice to CEOs.

If you are someone who wants to be prepared for CEOs who are armed with the realities of Big Data, then maybe this is for you too.

Point One: Big Data is bullshit

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Understanding Data-Less Apps: The Future of IT

21 Sunday Dec 2025

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Image1Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Dublin 9th May 2017 –  revised 21st December 2025

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Energising the Agile Way of Working brand and mindset

10 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by 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

Leadership 7s – Episode 1 – S01E01

03 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by in business strategy, Good Strategy, Information Management, IT strategy, Leadership 7s, project management

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Leadership 7s S01E01

This is the first in a series of management talking points. The name Leadership 7s has been influenced by the great game of rugby, which is was the emblematic game of my youth and a passion of the home country of my Mom and Dad, Wales.

In fact, much of what I learned about leadership in my formative years came from fundamentally social influences such as rugby union.

So, today I want to address seven talking points that deal with aspects of leadership, coaching and management.

STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design

28 Tuesday May 2019

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

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cropped-p4010326.jpgMartyn Richard 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.

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Learning to hate Agile-at-scale

11 Saturday May 2019

Posted by in agile, All Data, Architecture, business, business strategy, Inform, educate and entertain., 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 →

Postmodern Digital Stories: We’ve never seen anything like this before

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in business, Business Intelligence, business strategy, digital transformation, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, pomo, postmodern, Social Media, Strategy

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Picture2Martyn Richard Jones

Dunny on the Wold, 23rd August 2017

The prevailing conventional wisdom is that innovative technologies and their novel use are having an effect on many peoples’ lives. Indeed, the fascination with the possibilities offered by social media, the internet and the age of data is becoming all pervasive. Of course, not all is goodness and light. Some aspects, such as Denial of Service attacks, phishing without a permit and creatively-ambiguous chimping, mark the down side of this story. Continue reading →

How to turn internal user data into a massive liability – Zéro pièce

18 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Marty does, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

Laugharne 18th May 2017

“Our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.”

― Dylan Thomas

Let me explain

I read a poster the other, it read “How To Turn Internal User Data Into Revenue”. It was one of those Facebook or LinkedIn hooks, you know, the ones used to get people to spend precious time on useless pursuits.

It reminded me of a book that my mother-in-law bought for my partner, many, many moons ago. “How to make a mint whilst you snooze”, or some such wacky title.

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Data-Less Apps: Revolutionary IT

09 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Image1Martyn Richard Jones

Dublin 9th May 2017

Weighed down with data?

Inundated with information?

Overstrained with knowledge?

Intimidated by wisdom?

Don’t despair!

Relief from all of this is just be around the corner, in the shape of the next revolutionary inflection point in IT. Yes, as you might have guessed it by now. I am talking about data-less apps. Continue reading →

BIG DATA GURUS: Trifling Little Fibbers?

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by in business strategy, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Strategy

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Rantasaurus ‘Ricky’ Wrecks

Moscow 1st May 2017

In this week’s episode of ‘Putin the Bootin…’ Big Data Gurus…! Yep! Hold this thought…

There are no Big Data gurus.

THERE ARE NO BIG DATA GURUS!

T H E R E . . . A R E . . . N O . . . B I G . . . D A T A . . . G U R U S !

Call these unscrupulous wide-boys what you like, but, in any reasonable sense, when it comes to the Big Data enchilada, the unhelpful clowns who flog fake news, vulgar hype and vain-glorious exaggeration, are not gurus, of any way, shape or form.   Continue reading →

Project Planning: Sharing makes it real

07 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in business strategy, Good Strategy, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Marty does, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, project management, Project to Excel, Strategy

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SharingMakesItReal.003Martyn Richard Jones

Sunnyvale, CA – 7th May 2017

Listen up Team Leaders, Test Managers, Project Managers, Programme Managers, Portfolio Managers and PMOs.

You have just made the most perfect project plan in the entire history of project planning, and naturally you want to share your baby with the rest of the world.

But, you can’t.

Your perfectly designed, crafted and honed project plan is locked in a box that only you have access to.

Because none of your target audience has Microsoft Project. Continue reading →

Getting Agile Right

17 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in agile, business strategy, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., 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.

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Hadoop’s Revolutionary Data Warehouse

15 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

Baile Átha Cliath

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2017 Martyn Richard Jones

It’s Easter in Baile Átha Cliath, and thoughts naturally turn to purple-shrouded, sombre-shadowed and mystical aspects of bereavement, resurrection and bunnies.

Which may go some way to explain why people come up to me in the street, and apropos of nothing, ask me about what is the biggest reason why Data Warehousing projects fail.

Try as I might, I cannot convince people that the reasons I give have any validity. It’s as if the mundaneness of the stupidity involved in these failures is just too frivolous, banal and immature as to be believable or even worth listening to.

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Here’s a thought… A Date with Codd

18 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strategy, Inform, educate and entertain., information, Information Management, Information Supply Framework, IT strategy, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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SBMartyn Richard Jones

Carmarthen 18th March 2017

This is a second collection of snippets; ideas and occurrences that are aimed to provoke critical thought and engagement.

As I stated in the first of these articles, “Most people who know me, at least in a professional capacity, will know that I am no unconditional supporter of Data Warehousing, never mind the more plague ridden swamps inhabited by Big Data, Data Lakes, Travelling IoT, Dodgy Data Science, Instant Data Scientists (just add water) and New-Age Machine Learning. So, many will not be surprised by this heterogeneous post-modern pastiche of ideas, impressions and bagatelles.”

I have extended the original scope of these posts to include any thought on themes of strategy, data, technology, process, business and humanity. Continue reading →

Post-truth, Fake-news and Big Data

02 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

Lora del Rio, 2nd February 2017

image10

post-truth – ADJECTIVE – Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

fake news – a type of hoax or deliberate spread of misinformation in social media or traditional news media with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically.

Big data – a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate to deal with them.

If we believe the presses, and who wouldn’t, we are living in an age of post-truth, fake-news and Big Data.

Actually, none of this is new, not even the amazing volumes, varieties and velocities of boloney that surrounds the Big Data bandwagon. In fact, the big porky technique (a.k.a. the big lie) was invented when Anglo-Saxon cynicism was in its infancy.

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Data Supply Framework 3.0 – ETL Patterns

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, Data Supply Framework, Extract, Good Strategy, goodstart, governance, Inform, educate and entertain., Information Management, Information Supply Frameowrk, Information Supply Framework, IT strategy, Strategy, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

Mountain View, 22nd January 2015

image3This article is the first in a series of articles that discuss aspects of the use of architectural patterns in the Cambriano Information Supply Framework 3.0

The term architectural pattern may sound grand, misleading or daunting, but it’s really quite a simple concept. It’s like writing a function in a programming language to log in to a database, check that the connection is alive and working and report back the success of the connection request. If that function can be reused either in the same application development, in the same IT shop or in IT in general (e.g. Java code to connect and test the connection to SQL Server) then it’s well on its way to becoming an architectural pattern. Of course, there are much more sophisticated architectural patterns. But generally a pattern is a simplified and generic template for address a generally occurring problem. But as with much in architecture, less usually turns out to be more.

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CEO BRIEFING: What Every CEO Needs to Know About Big Data

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business, Business Intelligence, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Inform, educate and entertain., pig data, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

New York City, 18th January 2017

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Blue sky for professional data architecture and management

Scope

I’ll make this short, sweetish and to the point.

These are the arguments that CEOs need to know about Big Data.

It was written for CEOs and those who provide independent advice to CEOs.

If you are someone who wants to be prepared for CEOs who are armed with the realities of Big Data, then maybe this is for you too. Continue reading →

STRAIGHT TALK: Amazing Uses of Big Data at ISIS

02 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, BS, business strategy, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Marty does, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, satire, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

Langley, 2nd September 2016

Few outside of the big intelligence agencies of the USA, Russia and Andorra know this, but a big part of the success of Operational Excellence at ISIS can be put down to their judicious use of Big Data and Data Science. Or, so say the experts[i].

This will probably come as no surprise to big-gun Big Data gurus such as Bernard Marr, Rab C. Nesbitt or Alan Latchley, or indeed will it appear unusual to the more peripheral and intellectual areas of Big Data ‘guruship’ and Data Scientology, where we may find the likes of Shapiro, Kobielus and Podge and Rodge O’Leprosy.

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Big Data on the Roof of the World

29 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business, Business Intelligence, business strategy, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, good start, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstart, goodstartegy, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones

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Mount_Everest_as_seen_from_Drukair2_PLW_editOnce upon a time, there was a mountain known as Peak 15. Very little was known about it. Then in 1852, surveyors found it was the highest in the world, and they named it Everest.

As with other significant challenges that we can identify in life, many people have been driven by a passionate desire to conquer peaks all around the world. This is just one illustration of those of us who can identify their significant challenges and rise to them. This sharp focus, determination and courage turns ordinary citizens into people who are invariably on a mission. People who know what they want. Continue reading →

Big Data: And it’s all gone quiet over there!

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, Cambriano, Consider this, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strategy, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Big Data is all pervasive, all seeing and all knowing.

Everyone is doing Big Data, and if they aren’t then they will.  It’s inevitable.

Big Data will revolutionise the worlds of data, decision making and business.

Am I right, or am I right?

Continue reading →

Too Much Information

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, business strategy, dark data, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., IT strategy, Marty does, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, pig data, Strategy, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians

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Martyn Richard Jones

I have questions about data.

Most of us who have more than a cursory knowledge of the English language have heard of the phrase ‘too much information’. We know what it means, even if we don’t always know when to apply it.

For those who don’t know, or are unsure, the Urban Dictionary describes ‘too much information’ as “An expression of exasperation and disgust when a person is divulging personal details of his sex life, toilet habits, or anything the listener finds disgusting, uninteresting, and unwelcome.”[1]

Sum, sum. Just because we know it, doesn’t mean we should share it or even try and remember it, never mind go about analysing the hell out of it.

This is where Big Data comes in. Continue reading →