Category Archives: Creativity

Pieces that connect with creativity.

Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – The Guardian

24 Tue Feb 2026

Posted by 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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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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Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – Remastered and Revisited – 2026/01/27

07 Sat Feb 2026

Posted by 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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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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Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design

28 Tue May 2019

Posted by 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 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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Books with influence: Dialectic of Enlightenment

25 Thu Dec 2014

Posted by in Books with influence, Creativity

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Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. “What we had set out to do,” the authors write in the Preface, “was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.”

From the 2007 Edition.

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Silly Season! Data Warehousing is Hadoop is Big Data? – Unplugged for 2026

12 Sun Oct 2014

Posted by in Architecture, Ask Martyn, Banking, Best principles, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Creativity, Data Warehouse, Dogma, Knowledge, Peeves

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Martyn Richard Jones

2026 Remaster

Let’s get this baby off the ground

This weekend I read a piece on the Information Management website by Steve Miller with the title of Big Data vs. the Data Warehouse. It’s an old piece, from March 2014.

It was in response to a piece by Bill Inmon titled “Big Data or Data Warehouse?” Turbocharge Your Porsche – Buy an Elephant, in which he singled out for criticism the ad campaign of a big-data and Hadoop promoter.

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Nothing achievable is impossible: Challenges, Self-worth and Strategies – 2026 Replay

09 Thu Oct 2014

Posted by in Ask Martyn, Best principles, Creativity, Excellence, Methodology

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Martyn Richard Jones

Remastered for 2026

I came into IT at the tail end of the seventies, joining one of the original computing pioneers.

It was a conservative company led by veterans, engineers, accountants, and sales professionals, with many ties to the US administration, the Department of Defence, and intelligence agencies.

My interests at the time were in philosophy, politics and economics. I liked meeting people and talking, and I also enjoyed helping people solve real-life business problems, so I was always engaged with corporate staff and executive management rather than with the real hard-core technicians and engineers.

The thing is, I had no idea what constrained IT, so I never had that baggage when thinking about solutions.

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Big Data and the 7 Habits of a Highly Successful Catalan Sheepdog – Remastering for 2026

06 Mon Oct 2014

Posted by in Best principles, Big Data, Creativity, Executive, Knowledge, Management

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Martyn Richard Jones

Remaster 2026

Hi, I’m Ricky Jonesy-Innit, boss of Becci Boo Investments.

Last week, we said goodbye to our best commodity trader.

He’d been with us for years.

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Creativity and Corporate IT: Plumbers not Artists – Remaster 2026

06 Mon Oct 2014

Posted by in Architecture, Best principles, Creativity, Data Warehouse, Dogma, Excellence, Management, Offshoring, Outsourcing, Strategy

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Martyn Richard Jones

Remastered for 2026

Like many people around the world, I have certain expectations.

When I want some artwork done for a sales campaign, yes, I expect the people that I commission to show a lot of creativity.

When I want to read a novel, go to the theatre or simply chill out watching a movie, yes, I do expect some degree of creativity.

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Creativity – Three Stories – Remastered for 2026

05 Sun Oct 2014

Posted by in Best principles, Creativity, Dogma, Knowledge, Management

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Martyn Richard Jones

Remastered for 2026

Here are three stories that illustrate the connection between creativity and what we do in business. Jack’s Retail Story talks about the expansion of retail business; Jill’s Colour Book Story highlights a hugely pervasive tendency, even in these times; and Martyn’s Summer Story argues that there is a strategic time and place for some things.

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