A new project (lets call it project "slurpy") has been kicked off to our fix terribly broken business processes involving starting new projects. We currently have to go through a discovery phase, then a design, then a build then an implementation. Each phase is a discrete project. This is great if you are rolling out a new cellular phone network, but a little onerous if you want add a photo to the internal address book.
Despite this enormous administrative overhead, projects often get through "design" without a single requirement written down.
9 out of 10 failed projects fail because of poor requirements. I hope the first paragraph of recommendations from project Slurpy is "DEFINE YOUR REQUIREMENTS!"
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Why Rob a Bank?
Because that is where the money is.
95% of all identity fraud is perpetrated against corporates. Chances your identity is safe as long as you don't pass it on to anyone. It is only in danger once you tell the bank.
By far the majority of all costs incurred as a result of identity fraud is born by commercial institutions.
Catch 22.
If you take control of you own identity using the growing ecosystem of identity federation technologies, are you also prepared to bare the cost when you give it to the wrong person? When you hand your credit card over to the waitress and she walks off with it while you stare at her arse, does anyone consider she might be off to double swipe your card? Nope.
Are Bandit, Cardspace, OpenID and the like drive by what consumers want, or by very smart technicians trying to find a home for an idea?
95% of all identity fraud is perpetrated against corporates. Chances your identity is safe as long as you don't pass it on to anyone. It is only in danger once you tell the bank.
By far the majority of all costs incurred as a result of identity fraud is born by commercial institutions.
Catch 22.
If you take control of you own identity using the growing ecosystem of identity federation technologies, are you also prepared to bare the cost when you give it to the wrong person? When you hand your credit card over to the waitress and she walks off with it while you stare at her arse, does anyone consider she might be off to double swipe your card? Nope.
Are Bandit, Cardspace, OpenID and the like drive by what consumers want, or by very smart technicians trying to find a home for an idea?
How to fix a broken achilles in 1 easy step
A short fat guy from petone kicked me during a match last football season (the mighty Raes Raiders vs petone stu's mum at memorial park) and must have damaged my achilles on my left leg. I limped around for a while, which I think screwed up my biomechanics because I wasn't right at all for the rest on the season (20 odd games). In fact it slowly deteriorated all season.
Having survived without a complete rupture, I promptly took myself off to the physio for treatment. She was young and pretty, and had lots of good sounding advice. She started with retraining my core. excercises sooo subtle, you can't even tell you're doing them, in fact, you don't know if your doing them. It just feels like you're lying there watching TV.
2 weeks later: I go back and she says "WOW, you've really improved"... I have?
Repeat a half dozen times with equally strange excercises, including calf raises despite the fact I have calves so big they scare small children (not my fault... just genetics).
At last the time comes for a run.... and.... my achilles still hurts. #$%#^@#$
"Sod this!" I thought to myself. I grabbed my trusty swiss ball and tried something really simple. I stood on it.
The first day, I spent the entire session hugging the post of my veranda trying.
The end of the first week saw me standing on it more often than not and I had no pain at all in my achilles.
Now I can get on and off unaided, I don't fall... and pain has gone.
Why couldn't she tell me to just do that?
Having survived without a complete rupture, I promptly took myself off to the physio for treatment. She was young and pretty, and had lots of good sounding advice. She started with retraining my core. excercises sooo subtle, you can't even tell you're doing them, in fact, you don't know if your doing them. It just feels like you're lying there watching TV.
2 weeks later: I go back and she says "WOW, you've really improved"... I have?
Repeat a half dozen times with equally strange excercises, including calf raises despite the fact I have calves so big they scare small children (not my fault... just genetics).
At last the time comes for a run.... and.... my achilles still hurts. #$%#^@#$
"Sod this!" I thought to myself. I grabbed my trusty swiss ball and tried something really simple. I stood on it.
The first day, I spent the entire session hugging the post of my veranda trying.
The end of the first week saw me standing on it more often than not and I had no pain at all in my achilles.
Now I can get on and off unaided, I don't fall... and pain has gone.
Why couldn't she tell me to just do that?
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
What Requirements?
This week, three projects with a total sum budget around NZD 500 Million came to me with the same request.
"ummm, (cap in hand, staring at toes) we need an identity infrastructure built for our project (not making eye contact)".
"Ok. do you have any requirements for me and the team?"
"No. We don't have time."
"!"
I think the issue is that we have technologists running projects that belong to the business. Rather than technologists being engaged by the business to deliver stuff. We are all the same. We just want to build stuff, and see how it turns out. I don't think I would get me to run a NZD100 Million project to make our phones ring.
"ummm, (cap in hand, staring at toes) we need an identity infrastructure built for our project (not making eye contact)".
"Ok. do you have any requirements for me and the team?"
"No. We don't have time."
"!"
I think the issue is that we have technologists running projects that belong to the business. Rather than technologists being engaged by the business to deliver stuff. We are all the same. We just want to build stuff, and see how it turns out. I don't think I would get me to run a NZD100 Million project to make our phones ring.
Friday, July 13, 2007
The Value of Identity to an organisation
Been here at Telecom NZ for 3 months now (Principal of Identity and Access). It has been an interesting time.
It amazes me how an organisation can get into this state and yet still make money. It seems that there are dozens of (private?) agendas pulling in different directions.
As people have noticed that I am sitting here, I seem to have attracted more and more projects just screaming our for some sort of guidance in the Identity Realm. It is mostly the project managers that have torn their hair out burning money on projects, while making little headway on their identity designs.
On the other side of the fence, I have Operations defining what is the most convenient solution to support.
More on identity in the next episode.
It amazes me how an organisation can get into this state and yet still make money. It seems that there are dozens of (private?) agendas pulling in different directions.
As people have noticed that I am sitting here, I seem to have attracted more and more projects just screaming our for some sort of guidance in the Identity Realm. It is mostly the project managers that have torn their hair out burning money on projects, while making little headway on their identity designs.
On the other side of the fence, I have Operations defining what is the most convenient solution to support.
More on identity in the next episode.
Here we go then
So, work has been a little slow lately, and being of strong opinions, I have decided to start a blog and put some of my more controversial points of view up for discussion.
I am curious to see if what I think gets anyones attention and if I can't make my first dollar from purely web related activities. I won't be resorting to plastering my blog with scantily clad women, but I will be putting all the payperblog content I can on here.
I am curious to see if what I think gets anyones attention and if I can't make my first dollar from purely web related activities. I won't be resorting to plastering my blog with scantily clad women, but I will be putting all the payperblog content I can on here.
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