trisalsa's blog
It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that reads the postings here that I work in IT. Seriously, who else would care about most of this stuff anyway. At the same time, I like to get my hands dirty and have a pretty good knack for figuring things out. About 10 years ago, my wife and I purchased a fixer-upper. Not that we knew what we were getting into at the time, but it was in a great town, with great schools and in a quiet, affluent neighborhood. Before we ever actually moved in, we rolled up our sleeves and got down to work.
This was the first thing we saw written on the blackboard by the phone, as we walked into our two week home by the ocean. It sounded nice, was very welcoming, but really didn't leave much of an initial impression. We had just braved the weekend beach traffic, left behind the craziness of work and were still in mid-lunacy, trying to close on a bank loan in this post financial-meltdown world. But, after a few days, the artificial schedules we imposed on ourselves started to give way to the more natural rhythms of the tides and surf and the rise and setting of the sun and moon.
I find it very interesting how often the term "think outside the box" comes up. Especially when the person making the statement, quite often, doesn't know what the statement means or would now how to act upon a new "outside the box" idea should one make an appearance. The term has largely become a means to divert attention without actually saying anything meaningful. It certainly sounds good. "Think Outside The Box". But what do you do with it. All around us, people are trained to not think outside the box. They are trained to be conformist. To not rock the boat.
Something has been happening over the past several years that has the potential to adversely affect the enterprise. Companies are becoming so focused on "the business" as a result of SOA, BPM, Something as a Service or one of the multitude of other marketing buzzwords and methodologies that a significant portion of the enterprise is falling into neglect and disrepair. Oddly enough, this segment also serves as the foundation of nearly everything that happens within the enterprise. This segment's place in the modern enterprise is, quite often, not sexy.
What is our purpose? What is the answer? How did we get here? Questions that you hear all the time, yet can never be answered. So why do we keep asking them? Do we really want to know? We enjoy a movie, not because we get to an ending, but because we enjoy the journey that it takes us on. In fact, with a great movie, show, or book, we feel a sense of loss when they end. A loss when we know the answer. Is life (and all that it includes - family, work, eating and playing) so much different? Do I want to be all knowing and all seeing. Absolutely not.
This is the most subtle of the phases and the hardest to accomplish. Adoption goes beyond the obvious of using a new technology. Adoption is about creating your own solutions. Each technology has a general purpose that the marketing folks will use to get it in the door and sell it. But, that use will rarely b e an exact fit for the needs for a company. Until a company finds a way to make a technology its own, it will sit on a shelf, cost money and provide little value.
There has been a lot of talk lately on the benefits of telework and the productivity gains that are associated with it. However, my feeling is there are some generalizations being made that are being applied to all employee types equally. While it seems likely that a moderately skilled employee doing a repetitive task or a thought intensive type of work can be more focused (and thus more productive) in a home environment, this can be directly attributed to the reduction in distractions and interruptions that occur in a office setting.
I'm not sure what "enterprise" means anymore. The implied meaning is that there is a common goal of the organizations within a company to improve and foster the whole. However, in a more realistic sense, it seems that the modern enterprise has largely devolved into warring factions or clans with the hope of protecting outdated fiefdoms and traditional ways of doing business. New technologies like SOA, social networking and various collaboration mechanisms are trying to breakdown these old barriers.
I found it interesting this morning after reading an article at InfoQ about Handling Interruptions on Agile Projects. What most struck me was the similarities between the challenges in delivering application projects using an agile methodology and the delivery of any complex task in IT. A lot of focus recently has been placed on application development; making it easier to accurately and efficiently deliver on business requirements.
In discussions at my company and with other companies, there is a sense that IT organizations have stagnated. There is a lot of talk about aligning IT and business strategy and of SOA, but how the IT organization actually operates has changed little in the past 15 years. However, the business has changed during this time, both in function and in breadth, and the technologies and methodologies available for delivering business solutions have changed dramatically.
