Solution designs should only be a few pages

Solution designs should only be a few pages

Architects always get a bad rap when it comes to design documents. We get blamed for delivering these massive solution design documents that take weeks to produce, eat into the time for development and in the end result into an encyclopedia that nobody reads.

Read More
Following processes won't make you a robot

Following processes won't make you a robot

Every time I go to teams and start talking about process mapping and standard operating procedures (SOP) I notice an undeniable amount of unease like it just got a few degrees colder.

Read More
Teams Outlast Projects

Teams Outlast Projects

In my startup days, we often had these dead marches where we had to implement a massive new feature in time before some kind of trade show happened.

Read More
How teams grow organically

How teams grow organically

I’ve been working a lot with service line architecture recently. If you’re not familiar with that; it’s how business units such as IT, HR, or Sales bring services to clients, both internal and external.

Read More
Pace layering an application portfolio

Pace layering an application portfolio

In every organization I’ve worked with, there’s always been a handful of core applications, central, timeworn systems that quietly hold the business together.

Read More
The real ask

The real ask

One of my mentors, Steven Caus, always taught me the concept of “the question behind the question”: The question we receive is not always the problem we need to solve.

Read More
Chesterton’s Fence and paralysing your organization

Chesterton’s Fence and paralysing your organization

Some years ago I worked at a place that had, buried deep in the codebase, a service running that combed through the central data warehouse and flagged certain users.

Read More
The cost of ownership of a 1000 applications

The cost of ownership of a 1000 applications

Cost reduction is one of the main focuses of so many companies out there today. The market is not great, and that is the moment companies take a deep look at the financials of it all.

Read More
Choosing where to spend my team’s effort

Choosing where to spend my team’s effort

It’s the start of a new fiscal year. Strategy season. That time when all the grand ideas come out and everyone is still hopefull.

Read More
What's the role of software in an organization

What's the role of software in an organization

Last week, while sitting in a bar, I had a chat with a good friend of mine about the role of software in an organization.

Read More
Categories