X : You don't agree with agile?
Me : Eh? What? I agree with using appropriate methods based upon context.
X : Context of what?
Me : Context of the components of a project.
X : I'm not sure I understand.
Me : Ok. take your systems diagram ...
... turn it into a map by focusing on the user need, building the chain of components and asking how evolved is this component ...
... now realise that as things evolve their characteristics change which is why different methods have strengths in different contexts ...
... so, apply that pattern to your map and discuss with others. Allow them to challenge, to modify, to add missing knowledge etc.
But most importantly, realise that ...
... using agile (i.e. lightweight XP) is not the same as ...
... being agile.
Being agile requires you to use appropriate methods i.e. don't start building your own compute utility when there's a perfectly useable one out there.
X : Not sure why this matters?
Me : Hmmm. Take that systems diagram above. People often manage this with a one size fits all (i.e. outsource it all) and to make it manageable break it into "connected" areas i.e. this stuff is backoffice, this stuff is user experience ...
... let us apply one of those "connected" areas to the map. Let us choose engineering. Now, we're going to outsource this and so we're going to need a contract, so we know what we're getting ...
... well, I can tell you where the contract is going to mess up before we've even signed it. The stuff on the left will always occur excessive change control costs if you attempt to define it in a contract ...
... sitting down with a £600M+ contract, spending a day mapping and showing where the contract is going to massively overrun is one of my superpowers.
X : Why £600M?
Me : Happens to be a contract I'm thinking of.
X : What happened?
Me : They did it anyway and ...
... failed in all the right places. Massive cost overruns etc etc.
X : Why did they do it?
Me : The power of narrative. They believed in their story, they associated themselves (and their own power) with the story and they refused to accept challenge against their story.
X : Is this common?
Me : 84% of digital transformation efforts fail, over 50% of outsourcing efforts fail (and that has only come down because we count cloud as outsourcing) etc. It's more common than not.
X : But those failures aren't just contracts and purchasing.
Me : Agreed but a significant number of the failures appear to have a common thread - an excellent story built on a lack of challenge and a lack of situational awareness
X : Mapping seems a lot of work.
Me : It is. It took me an entire day to map out a £600M contract and spot the flaws ... seriously, are you really going to play the analysis paralysis card?
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dX: How do you deal with strategy?
Me: First, we need to answer the Where question, which depends a lot on the what and why.
dX: And?
Me: Ok, some very simple steps ...
Step 1: Visualise your environment. That means getting people to discuss, collaborate & challenge in order to create a "good enough" map of your environment. Should be a couple of hours.
Step 2: Look at what's changing which is competitor moves, your moves & economic patterns.
Step 3: Using the map, determine where you could invest/focus on. You're not making a decision yet, you just want the options. By now, you could have spent four hours on the exercise.
Step 4: Decide where you should invest i.e. look at the options using why & what
Those born in the 1890s experienced electrification, telephone, radio, television, nuclear age, penicillin, two world wars, commercial flight, computer age and a moon landing. By the 60s we had AI, VR and 3D printing.
Today, we have the internet / www and have improved stuff.
Is it me, or is human progress slowing down? Great breakthroughs, moments of change, and radical transformations seem like a thing of the past. What we call "revolutions" in industry today seems mostly a marketing slogan.
If you think back to 1957 and the Mark I Perceptron machine that was built at Cornell, then consider the changes in the previous 60 years ... you can't help but think they would be bitterly disappointed with how slow we have progressed in the following 60 years.
We will be entering a phase in which the US high-tech industry (including the military complex) is highly dependent upon China, whilst China is not dependent upon the US.
For those who doubt how clear the intentions were ... go read Made in China, 2025.
China's government made its intentions evident in 2015. The US sabre rattling of sanctions reinforced that purpose whilst the US essentially continued with a misguided "market knows best" policy.
A couple of prompts with Claude 3 creates a Wardley Map for economic sovereignty in the defence space.
Not bad at all -
On par with political, military and defence folk I've spoken to. I'm also finding I can have a reasonable discussion about mapping with Claude 3.onlinewardleymaps.com/#clone:XvHskIi…
It's not perfect but it's not bad. There's more I want to interrogate Claude over ... i.e. the link to secure sourcing, the positioning of some components etc. But it's almost good enough that I can start a discussion over strategy and investment.
Anyway, upshot is that Claude 3, from my perspective, has left ChatGPT4 in the dust. Of course, I'll use Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini to cross-compare for now but if I do start building anything more complex then the obvious path is AWS Bedrock which gives me Mistral etc.
dX: What is the single most significant problem facing AI today? Safety? Lack of skills? Inertia?
Me: Overinflated expectations by the business.
dX: You don't think AI will become widespread?
Me: Of course, it will; industrialised components are rapidly becoming cost of doing business. Don't confuse that with expectations. There will be an awful lot of disappointed businesses hoping it would create some advantage.
dX: I don't understand.
Me: Imagine you're just finishing off your plan for how AI will revolutionise your business. Six months for budget approval, one year to build team, 18 months to deliver something ... that's 3 years from now. Any advantage you thought of is long gone.
For those who don't know, I'm working increasingly on and with Glamorous Toolkit - ... I have become fascinated by our willingness to blame humans for problems that are created by our toolsets ...gtoolkit.com
... I saw this last night at Cloud Camp. Apparently, the issues with understanding, explainability and observability in AI are down to humans' inability to deal with complex environments... no, they're not. The problem is with the tools and the type of tools we are creating ...
... we've imported concepts from a physical world where tools are constrained by physics - hence a hammer is a hammer, a drill is a drill - into a world without such constraints. Rather than building contextual tools, we've built constrained tools.