“Knowledge is the capacity to give correct answers to questions.”
“There is no well trodden path that takes a straight line from symbols, through data to knowledge and wisdom. This is just some nonsense invented by the IT industry.” – Martyn Jones
We may define data as being the symbolic representation of value or conversely of something which has no attached value. Data may represent, among other things, time, money, resources or worldly objects.
Martyn Richard Jones
Laugharne 18th May 2017
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.
Martyn 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. (more…)
Martyn 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. (more…)
Martyn 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.
Martyn Jones
Madrid 25th January 2017
HERE’S A THOUGHT! In the past age of big iron, the only reason for not having a proliferation of duplicated databases was the prohibitively high cost of disk storage. Now, we can let our database collections grow ‘like Topsy’. This is the Brave New World of data… apparently…
Let’s, for one moment, be the fly-guy on the corporate wall. What are we picking up on the radar there, Enda? Oh, yes…
Martyn Richard Jones
Baile Átha Cliath
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.
It’s not something I have thought about a lot. But, apropos of nothing, a question came to mind. That question, as if you couldn’t guess by now, was “why do I like LinkedIn?”
Well, here is my first attempt at addressing this question.
I really like LinkedIn because:
Martyn Richard Jones
Dublin, 10th September 2016
Theresa May, as Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s Government, has overall responsibility for organising the United Kingdom’s retreat from the European Union.
But, Theresa May has a problem, she doesn’t appear to have a detailed plan for Brexit, at all.
Martyn Richard Jones
Bamberg, 8th September 2016
Months have passed since the United Kingdom held its European Union membership referendum which resulted in a ‘win’ for the pro-leave Brexiteers. Yet the strongest signal coming out of London is that the government is stalling; playing for time. Clearly, as yet, the government hasn’t worked out in any real, concrete or detailed terms what it should be doing or where the country should be going or what it can even say to the array of stakeholders and interested parties. Which, given that Brexit is by far the biggest constitutional challenge in my lifetime, is quite problematic.