Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Links for 2007-08-14
Is it true that EA fails because they have very little true, accurate insight into the way the business works and the future direction that things are heading? I believe the former to be true while the later to be false. I should elobarate on this in a future blog entry.
Matt Asay gets it twisted by defining community as those who write for magazines and work for software vendors when the definition is much larger. I for one am a member of this community and have never held to the double standard he mentions. In fact, there is evidence where I have asked others to not consider dual-licensing as open source and to consider it as a dishonest attempt to con folks. In fact, I have been vocal about encouraging my industry peers to avoid dual-licensing like the plague and instead ask them to consider 100% closed source as the more ethical choice.
One of the most interesting things about risk analysis is how very difficult it can be to do analysis correctly. There are many different variables, and each to be considered within several contexts.
Telecommuting does have the potential of reducing labor costs. Consider folks who get on Metro North every day. If they could avoid the trip into NYC, would they take a $10K pay cut to do so?
I wonder if Apoorv Durga and others in India agree that this type of advice should be mandatory reading for those not only outsourcing but those who have realized that outsourcing is a bad idea and are now backsourcing?
You would think with PMBOK that project management would feel more consistent but yet this has the most variability in IT and enterprise architects need to start paying attention to how projects are run in their shops.
I really hate hearing the phrase competitive compensation. Does it mean that you only pay mediocre? How about telling us something about the employer that is distinct from other employers such as whether they allow participation in the open source community, their CEO blogs or something else different than the usual recruiting dribble?
At conferences, there should be competition amongst architects to prove their worth. I know this happens at BlackHat and DefCon but why not Gartner conferences? The Gartner analysts may learn a thing or two about real architecture by observing it face-to-face instead of relying on briefings via phone calls
Finally, a manifesto that folks in corporate America actually understand and won't get twisted
Andrew Kirkland nails it when he describes the rationale for why managers play architect and points out the reason to be that they usually aren't competent at the role they have been asked to play. Maybe more discussion is in order regarding the lack of competency amongst the business analyst community?
