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Fireballs in the Sky wins iAward
Very exciting news for the Fireballs in the Sky app team from Curtin University and ThoughtWorks: the app won the iAwards education category in 2015! The AIIA iAwards are the premier awards program for innovation in the Australian digital economy. Believe me, I am excited, even though Phil gets all the speaking parts in this heavily edited interview 🙂 I…
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Your Software is a Nightclub
Why a nightclub? Well, it’s a better model than a home loan. I’m talking here about technical debt, the concept that describes how retarding complexity (cost) builds up in software development and other activities, and how to manage this cost. A home loan is misleading because product development cost doesn’t spiral out of control due to missed interest payments over…
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Dumbbell Delivery; Antifragile Software
Not online fitness shopping. Not the brogrammer pumping iron. This is a brief discussion of Antifragile – the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – and relevant insights for software delivery or other complex work. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive exploration of the topics. It’s more a join-the-dots exercise, and it’s left up to the…
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Narrative Visualisation Tools
I use narrative visualisations a lot. I like to frame evidence so that it commands attention, engages playful minds, and tells its own story (see also Corporate Graffiti). I’ll put new tools on GitHub as I create them. Here are three to start. Visualising Stand-Up Attendance I used the Space Invader metaphor with a busy leadership team…
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Visual Knowledge Cycles
Visualisation is a key tool for the management of knowledge, especially knowledge from data. We’ll explore different states of knowledge, and how we can use visualisation to drive knowledge from one state to another, as individual creators of visualisation and agents within an organisation or society. (There’s some justifiable cynicism about quadrant diagrams with superimposed crap circles. But, give me…
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Corporate Graffiti – Being Disruptive with Visual Thinking
As you go about your work you’ll come up against walls. Some walls will be blank and boring blockers to progress. These need decoration; spraying with layers that confer meaning. So pick a corner and start doodling. With a new perspective, you’ll find a way around the blockers. Other walls will come with messages – by…
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Seeing Stars – Bespoke AR for Mobiles
I presented on the development of the awesome Fireballs in the Sky app (iOS and Android) at YOW! West with some great app developers. See the PDF. (NB. there were a lot of transitions) Abstract We’ll explore the development of the Fireballs in the Sky app, designed for citizen scientists to record sightings of meteorites…
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Playing Games is Serious Business
Simple game scenarios can produce the same outcomes as complex and large-scale business scenarios. Serious business games can therefore reduce risk and improve outcomes when launching and optimising services. Gamification also improves alignment and engagement across organisational functions. This is a presentation on using games to understand and improve organisational design and service delivery, which…
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Iterative vs Incremental Flashcard
Sometimes, the difference between incremental and iterative (software) product development is subtle. Often it is crucial to unlocking early value or quickly eliminating risk – an iterative approach will do this for you, while incremental will not. Let’s review the distinction. Incremental means building something piece by piece, like creating a picture by finishing a jigsaw…
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The Like-for-Like Project Antipattern
Like-for-like replacement. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? That’s an easy project to deliver, right? Wrong. Why would we do a like-for-like (L4L) project? The IT group may want to upgrade to a new system, because the old one is broken, or because they’ve found something better. Maybe we want to avoid re-training users. Or, maybe…