Notes on Agile software development

The role of Agile development is sometimes pretty much overestimated. Actually, the problem is that in most of the agile development methods it is supposed that the specification and the deliveries can be changed sprint by sprint or delivery by delivery. However most of the software projects have got a fix budget and a fix delivery time that is pretty much a contradiction....

Notes on infrastructure reversal

I heard today a great and genial presentation from Andreas M. Antonopoulos about Bitcoin and he used an analogy that is pretty much existing: that is infrastructure reversal at appearance of a new emerging technology. He used three examples for demonstration: 

Automobile industry: well nowadays it seems to be trivial that driving by car is much better than riding a horse, however at the appearance or invention of the car the situation was much less trivial. Most of the roads were "optimised" for horses and the lack of petrol stations actually implied that driving a car was less effective, slower, more complicated, more expensive than riding a horse. From pure economical point of view the automobile industry did not have the chance: there were no need for better asphalt streets and more petrol stations because there were not enough demand : people who drove care. There were no demand for more cars, because due to the lack of infrastructure the it was actually worse than riding a horse. Despite slowly the infrastructure has been changed, giving place for asphalt roads and petrol stations provided a better infrastructure to the cars, but allowing riding the horse as well....

Electricity: a similar process can be recognized by making light and heating with electricity. As actually infrastructure for gas provided both the infrastructure and technology for heating and lighting houses, actually there were no need for electricity. As there were no infrastructure for electricity, it was not very much logical to use electricity, on the contrary as there were not too many customers for electricity there were not very much logical to invest in the infrastructure itself. Despite a couple of 10 years later there only electricity used for lights and sometimes for heating as well...

Internet: imagine the heroic age for internet, you use the classical telephony network that is highly optimized only for voice transfer with modems to transfer data. It is actually a big fight, the network is optimized for voice transfer, having to filter only a couple of Kbytes, so transferring data is not easy. From a supply - demand perspective it is not very much logical that the situation changes: there is not really a good transfer for data, so it makes not really sense to invest into the technology. On the other hand there is not enough people who uses the internet, so there is no sense to invest into the infrastructure. Despite only a couple of years later, there are practically only digital transfer possibilities optimized for data and even voice transfer is released on the top of digital transfer....  

After that I would have just three questions...

Microeconomics:  Why did supply and demand model not work in these examples ? Or did I learned only bullshit from this subject ?

Cloud ?: Do we have the same effect with cloud ? Will we have in 5 years something like on-premise infrastructure or just special parts of the cloud ?

Blockchain ?: Do we have the same effect with Blockchain or Bitcoin ? Do we have in 10 years something like national central banks, or just special implementations of the Blockchain ?

Notes on Blockchain Apps

Bitcoin and Blockchain technologies seem to live theirs second hype cycle. The focus however seem to be chaining. Previously the major focus seem to be to create new digital currencies, like Bitcoin, Litecoin or for instance Dogcoin. However the focus is getting to go to technologies that are build on the Blockchain technology but not necessarily focusing on a digital currency, rather general applications as well, like private decentralized web sites (Zeronet), or blockchain based contracts (Smart Contracts) or Smart Property. It is however more interesting that not only out of the box products (or perhaps I should say networks) are possible, but general development framework as well. As an example Ethereum provides not only a general Blockchain product but rather a framework that allows to build further applications on the top, the so called decentralized Apps or simply Dapps. As of course it is still questionable if ethereum will succeed on the market, despite such platforms provide the opportunity for individual developers or developer companies to create small scale projects and application without the challenges of a whole product development.

Notes on User Interfaces based on Artificial Intelligence

The grid provides or at least at the moment promises a desing and user interface web technology that changes based on the average user pattern of a site. The usage is measured analysed by different artificial and data-mining algorithm and a new design a new, a new site structure is proposed automatically. 

As the idea seems pretty much science fictional for the first run but actually the idea itself is not so wild. Basically every search based user interface and application follows the same pattern. Certainly not only whole user interface is restructured, only a part and it is basically regarded to content as opposed to structure. As an example consider an news portal that automatically shows some information based on different sources and selection criteria. Despite the field is rather regarded as search than like data mining, the pattern is pretty much the same: 

 1. collect data

 2. analyse data

 3. show something different on the user interface.   

The two differences are : 

 a. The field is regarded as search and not data mining or artificial intelligence: well it does not seem to a be a huge difference. Basically most of the search and indexing algorithm show some similarity with data-mining. Actually the two fields were pretty much common a couple of years ago. 

 b. In search based applications, only small area of the user interface can be dynamically changed, like a search result or a filter result. However it is not necessarily a big different either, technically the whole user interface could be reconstructed. If it makes sense from an endure point of view is certainly a more difficult question.   

Notes on OOTB Software Products

It is pretty much interesting how different the meaning of the world Out Of the Box in IT. If we say "think out of the box" the meaning rather think extraordinary thinks special, think in a non-standard way. On the other had if one says out of the box software product, the meaning is not exactly the same, one might say it is a little bit contrary, it practical means a ready product that can be used without modification: "An out of the box feature or functionality (also called OOTB or off the shelf), particularly in software, is a feature or functionality of a product that works immediately after installation without any configuration or modification." - Source - Wikipedia

As the two meanings are different, it is always a question what exactly means if we use the world "out of the box" in different context for something else, like for a company for an idea for non-software product ... Does it mean something innovative or extraordinary, or does it mean something ready or ready to go ?

Even if we concentrate on the out of the box software products it is pretty much a question if it is possible to have a product really ready to go. Unfortunately most of our software products are pretty much complicated, in this sense apart from the most simplest software the others usually require an amount of customization, configuration and training activity. In this sense it is better to define the OOTB that you can get a ready product for a certain prize with let we say 10 - 20 - 30 percent customization, parametrisiation, installation, and training on top. It is certainly a question where is exactly the limit between an OOTB and a non-OOTB product ? 

Notes on digital trash

Notes, Blogs, Social media, LinkedIn, Xing, Facebook, Sharing, Liking, Information Sharing. There is a lot of information floating overall the globe, however it might make sense to ask the question : do we really need all of these pieces of information ? Do not we cause by chance just an unnecessary amount of information trash or information junk ? Similarly as the industrial revolution resulted a lot of physical trash, does the IT revolution result a lot informational trash ??

Notes on digital workplace and the visual models behind

There is an ongoing direction both from Microsoft in the direction of SharePoint and from other companies as well to speak about digital workplace. The question that is not hundred percent clear what does digital workplace exactly mean ? I mean I am pretty much sure that there is a lot of definition for that but from a practical point of view I would imagine a classical at least half digital workplace and I would imagine that digital version of that. So than basically the question is what is out model ?  Which workplace do we want to imagine as a digital workplace for the first run ?

Visual Model 1: Is our model something similar than bellow ? Than we speak about a software that supports digital documents, printing perhaps some extended functionalities like approving workflows and if we are very creative some digital brainstorming methods or electronic post-its.  

Figure 1. A workplace that can be imagined as digital.

Visual Model 2: Or is our model rather something bellow ? If so than the requirements are however much higher, than we speak about real time and high availability systems, mission critical system integration probably real time operation systems and basically everything that our state of the art IT can provide...

Figure 2. A workplace that can be imagined as digital.

WHAT IS OUR BASIC MODEL FOR DIGITAL WORKPLACE ?

Notes on IT Technology partnerships

Let we summarized some possible technological partnership that are typical in the IT field. Among the others we can consider:

- Product based technology partnership: is usually a partnership between a software product manufacturer and a partner company. The partner company can develop the basic technology of the manufacturer further, like implementing add-ins, custom plug ins and extensions.

- Platform based technology partnership: In this special example, the manufacturer do not sell a ready to go product, instead a general platform that provides the possibility of creating a range of different products. Typical cooperation example that the manufacturer provides only the framework and the partner companies realize projects on top. 

- Reseller: It is a typical sales partnership. The partner company resells the product of a manufacturer for a certain sales marge. 

- Exclusive partner: The partner has got exclusive right for a certain territory, it is usually a re seller style of cooperation, however a rather technological focus is also possible. 

- Distributor: The distributor in software industry usually has got a the possibility to build a partner network and acting directly in a specific field as the manufacturer itself and getting sales revenue not only after the direct but after the partner sales as well.  

- Exclusive distributor: combining the previous models with some exclusive rights for a certain territory.  

Amortization of a software technology

Considering the current technological improvement, most of a technological knowledge will be obsolete in a couple of years. One of the best example is SharePoint development. In 2008 mostly ASPX and server side knowledge was required, in 2010 Silverlight, in  2012 Web Service Integration was the focus in 2014 mostly JQuery and Apps and actually who knows what comes in 2016 ? (I guess Angular JS is the new trend but who knows how long),In this sense it makes sense to define the amortization of a technology either in a sense of how much effort does it take to keep the knowledge up to date, or in a sense that how fast will be an existing knowledge obsolete.

Amortization of a software technology: 

Definition 1: the average amount of time until an exiting technological knowledge gets obsolete.

Definition 2: the amount of energy that needs to be invested to keep the technological knowledge up-to-date.

In this sense we can speak about technologies with high amortization rate and technologies with low amortization rate. Typically technologies that are pretty knew or at the beginning of the technological curve, like in introduction or early growth phase, have got high amortization rate. On the contrary, technologies at the maturity or late growth phase usually have got low amortization rate.

Notes on SCRUM and agile project management

Scrum is an agile project methodology that helps you deliver a software project in a more efficient way. Sometimes the methodology is pretty much overvalued. Basically the classical truth are not changed: either you know what you should deliver, or you do not have a clue

.

1. If you know what you should delivery, you can deliver with SCRUM in a fast and more efficient way.

2. If you do not know what you should delivery, you are going with SCRUM to the wall in a fast and more efficient way.