mobrec

So
It is becoming routine to see baiting headlines like Gartner's latest on SOA Is A Failure. Suitably, this puff piece was delivered by the king of the malaprop.

To save you the time, here is the formula for a Gartner blog posting of this type: “_insert technology to be disparaged here_ is/will be a failure if it doesn't solve a business problem and is technology for technology's sake. It will fail even faster if you do not manage it properly and don't have accountability.” Done. There you have it. No insight, no facts, just the same set of pro forma platitudes that have existed in the IT industry for years.

It is equally important to notice what doesn't get written: 'We (Gartner) told you to drop everything and run after this technology previously without making sure it solved a business problem, etc'.

Technorati Tags: architecture, dubious, soa

So
I was reflecting on the state of the BPM marketplace while returning from Software AG's Innovation World. It seems that, by and large, there are few consultants out there who can advise you on the actual implementation of BPM (the hard part) but plenty of them that can fulminate on the easier theoretical portions. For example, here is a relative plot of the marketplace as I see it:

The justification phase is easy, as it primarily consists of the same pro forma advise for any IT-related project: have an executive sponsor, get business buy in, don't try to justify a big bang approach, blah, blah blah. Check.

The analysis phase is where the Lean/Six Sigma types will descend upon you with endless discussion of SIPOC and other jargon. Don't get me wrong, this is a valuable analysis to have, it just does not solve the entire problem.

Then comes the actual implementation and the sounds of crickets in the field. For implementation, that favorite consulting cliche comes out all too often: 'it all depends'. Well, yes, it does all depend, but if anyone has successfully implemented BPM even a handful of times, they should be able to begin to synthesize a set of best practices and guidelines in general and offer specifics in a given tool stack. This area is sorely wanting — in most cases, even the vendors can't tell you how to effectively use their own tool stacks in any detail.

Assuming that you have navigated the rocky shores of implementation, there are any number of Business Activity Monitoring and Business Intelligence vendors who will sell you their wares to help you visualize your process data as executive friendly dashboards and portals. They typically have nothing to say about effective data collection and meaningful representation of data.

Technorati Tags: architecture, BPM, consulting, enterprisearchitecture, soa, technology

So
Not really sure of the value of this, but it is a bit fun to type in names and see the result.

Technorati Tags: fun, visualization, webtools

So
In an amazingly progressive move from embarrassingly staid Cincinnati, the city has introduced dedicated parking spots around the central business district dedicated to two wheeled vehicles. Though in typical Cincinnati fashion, they introduce the parking spots at the onset of winter when there will be fewer riders to actually take advantage of them. What I hope doesn't happen is that they assess the usage of the spots over winter and conclude that no one is using them.

Technorati Tags: cincinnati, parking, scootering

So
At least the 'logic' sounds familiar, if not the tactic of not allowing a response.

Technorati Tags: batman, dubious, politics, video

So
I bet this guy has wanted to do this ever since he was a little kid.

Technorati Tags: fun, video

So
I tried out the latest Yahoo Go mobile app on my Nokia N95 8GB. Go quickly demonstrated that Yahoo have no idea about the mobile market and their offering stinks. By focusing on bandwidth wasting adverts they undermine the entire mobile experience.

In my case I loaded up Go to try out the new voice search feature. Marginal success in that it mis-interpreted most everything that I spoke into it. Just for fun, I clicked over to check for my email. Up pops and error that it can't connect to email. But apparently what it *could* do was connect to a server and start streaming some useless video for some Ford product that I had absolutely no interest in. If I wasn't on an unlimited plan, I'd be really pissed. Oh, an there is no way to stop the ad until it downloads completely — sheer genius.

This is just further confirmation of what I have talked about before: Yahoo is clueless, it's offerings suck and they should just agree to Microsloth's offer to buy them and put them to sleep.

Technorati Tags: crap, dubious, mobile, n95, suckage, yahoo, yahoogo

So
Another study shows that people come up with more creative solutions to problems by using simple paper and pencil than they do by using a computer. Fundamentally, the difference seems to be between a constrained environment (the computer) and an unconstrained one (pencil and paper).

This mirrors my own experience in computer programming and other areas. When I first started programming over twenty years ago, I felt I came up with a much better solution by sketching out the overall flow of the app and the different sub-routines and modules on paper first. Now it seems the first instinct of most developers is to reach for google and copy and paste some code rather than think through the problem themselves and come up with an approach.

Technorati Tags: cognition, creativity, ideas, technology

So
From Counterintuitive physics may help everyone drive home quicker

If you're trying to drive to a destination as quickly as possible, you might think that knowing the traffic conditions would help you choose the quickest route for yourself. Traffic reports and new GPS technologies that provide traffic data are based on this assumption – but scientists have found that knowing this information may do more harm than good.

A recent study has investigated just how much time is lost due to individuals opting for strategies that maximize their own personal utility rather than the social optimum, which often aren’t the same. Physicists Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, Korea, and computer scientist Michael Gastner from the Santa Fe Institute and the University of New Mexico in the US, call this lost time “the price of anarchy” (POA) that society must pay for the lack of individual coordination.

This would appear to be another demonstration that acting for a greater good rather than for individual gain actually benefits the individual as well. Check out Robert Axelrod's excellent book The Evolution of Cooperation for more on this topic.

So
Trying to keep these forays into politics to a minimum but this is one that really struck me last night watching McCain and Obama debate:

Someone needs to sit John McCain down and explain to him that no matter what he does, he can't 'win' the Vietnam War by fighting in Iraq/Iran. It just isn't going to happen.

Technorati Tags: dubious, mccain, opinion, politics