Telotecture - architecture's complement

Architecture - as I took 4 years of Greek it's always meant the same word to me: that what stands at the beginning of construction, "ἀρχι-τέκτων". Tekton is a builder / carpenter, and I was sure there was a verb tektein, but after looking for hours I'm afraid that this is it. At least arche doesn't mean leader, it's the Greek word for beginning - so don't get fooled by online etymology sites or even wikipedia

Anyway.
Now, I'm not so sure. An architect used to be a sort of foreman overseeing and instructing the builders as well. Comparing that to IT, I think we've had almost 2 decades now of Architecture that were moderately successful.
Moderately, because initially a lot of people floated their way up into the architectural layer due to a lack of weight. Now we have various certifications, of which TOGAF is a reasonably good one, and quality has significantly increased - but there are other issues now

One of them is the decreased size of projects, and the increased distance between the Architect and the Workers - and you know what happens when the cat's away.

Public chats on Twitter - invading your timeline?

After a conversation with Alan Berkson, I wondered about the public chats on Twitter. They're conducted by following / naming a hashtag, which usually happens at conferences, but there are also various chats going on such as #lrnchat, #influencechat

How do you chat on Twitter? That is the question. And it is a difficult one, or rather, the answers are various. There is no general recipient for a chat except a hashtag maybe, but that is visible for all others to see. So everything you say, goes down your timeline and is to be absorbed by your followers

Did Apple finally get hitched?

[Image by Roberta F.]

Thanks to Peter Hicks for inspiring me for this title

Lately I've noticed quite a few complaints regarding the upgrade to Apple's iOS5. A few examples of that: the upgrade itself failing to complete, having to restore factory settings and lose all apps and files, battery draining like mad, Twitter failing until after complete deinstall and reinstall of Twitter, all iTunes lost, all images lost, being unable to SMS, and many, many more complaints when you search for "ios5 fail" on Twitter

Coincidentally, this the first time I've heard fanbois complain about their Precious. And no, relating that to the passing of Steve jobs wouldn't be funny

Open Source and Cloud, Mobile, Data: what goes where?

After an interesting question from Matt Asay I gave a few answers, then decided that Twitter's not always suited for long conversations (ahem)

I'm working on the theme for OSBC2012. I want to highlight the connection btwn cloud/mobile/data. Can someone help me express that?

My first reaction was that these words are big, and could mean a lot of different things to different people. I don't like to talk about Cloud as it's a blanket term for three different main streams in general: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS (infra, operating system and software).
Mobile? Pretty much the same thing. Mobile has operating systems and software, and is useless without that special infrastructure called Connectivity: a connection to the Web

B2B and Social - selling ice-cream in the desert?

Lately I see a lot of "news" on B2B from a place I wouldn't expect: Social.
In my opinion Social and B2B have absolutely no business with each other (see my freeBook on Social Business)

Joshua Paul is my superhero of the day here, with an utter nonsense post titled 10 Secrets of the B2B Social Business Superhero

Cloud API's don't exist, but become costlier over time

I had a discussion with George Reese on Cloud and API's, starting with me saying I'd support a maximum of 3 different API versions, and off went the discussion.
His "Max 3 versions? Do you hate your ecosystem?", "What do you mean there's no such thing as a public cloud API?" and "When you cease to support a version of your API, you kill your ecosystem." were puzzling, and he ended with "The bottom line is this: If you decide to change your API, who should bear the costs of that change? You or your ecosystem?"

Let me try to explain here what Cloud is, what API's are, and what cost is

The project versus product dilemma in Enterprise IT

[Image via Dave Spicer]

I've often run into the project-product dilemma over the last decades: a company does business by supplying products and services, which -after it's reached a certain size- can only be implemented with the help of IT. Over time, that "help" turns into "sole reliance on"

Strangely enough, these IT-implementations are project-driven, and have increasingly become so over the years. Scrum, Agile, XP: all software-developments methods of the last decade are single-mindedly focused on how to do a project faster

When the project's completed, the product is deemed to have been delivered and the project team is dismantled, with maintenance and support (to be) handed over to the standing organisation - so the business product gets delivered by an IT project, and then what?

Intrinsic motivation - doesn't work well in enterprises 2/2

After my previous post on intrinsic motivation, trashing the single study / research underlying Dan Pink's speech, I had awkward responses. For some reason, people had a very hard time reading and understanding the post, where I clearly stated the scope in the very beginning: focusing entirely on the single so-called research underlying it.
Most dragged in other research (hah! the irony of that) or spoke about their own experiences and some even slapped me around the ears with books.
I told all that I wasn't prepared to listen to that unless they gave me a motivated point of view on my post, its content and my conclusion. Alas, only one came close but managed to get sidetracked within one single tweet. So I rest my case: the 2005 Federal Reserve Bank "Large Stakes, Big Mistakes" Ariely study was fraudulent, and only meant to prove its hypothesis. And no one cares about that

Anyway, now onto the second part: my own opinions on and experiences with extrinsic and intrinsic motivation