An Architect's Meditation for Today: Sharpening The Saw
Continual improvement is about moving the needle, incrementally.
Organizations are organisms (or systems of organisms) - and, in my experience, will usually resist any attempts at sudden/dramatic changes - just as biological organisms will strive to fight off an infection by attacking the invading agent.
For many architecture teams - the one simple practice that I see missing most often - but, yet - I think might provide the most benefit - for the least effort: Retrospectives.
Five Retrospective Questions:
1) What went right? - celebrate the successes.
2) What went wrong? - perform root-cause analysis (seek insight, not blame).
3) What should we add? - what's missing from the process?
4) What should we subtract? - what's superfluous?
5) How can we do it better/faster/cheaper next time?
Some interestingsecurity talks from the videos posted on YouTube from last year's LocoMocoSec: Hawaii Product Security Conference (LocoMocoSec 2019: Kauai)
The Timer feature is used as an aid to adopting the time management Pomodoro Technique
"The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for 'tomato', after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student"
"Though development of TrueCrypt has ceased, an independent audit of
TrueCrypt (published in March 2015) has concluded that no significant
flaws are present"
A suggested book, coming out in September 2020, to put a reminder on your calendar:
Knowledge Graph 1st ed. 2020 Edition, by Guilin Qi (Author), Huajun Chen (Author), Kang Liu (Author), Haofen Wang (Author), Qiu Ji (Author), Tianxing Wu (Author)
"This book provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of knowledge graph, covering all aspects including the theoretical foundations, key techniques and methodologies, and various typical applications. Special focus is given to the practical methods for knowledge graph construction and management, especially methods for constructing knowledge graphs from texts and from Encyclopedia, and methods for knowledge fusion and reasoning.
It can serve as reference book for researchers and students new to knowledge graph."
"From this book, the readers will learn how to construct large-scale knowledge graphs from different sources, how to manage multiple knowledge graphs and do reasoning with a knowledge graph. Some basic knowledge on discrete mathematics, probability and statistics, data structure, and databases is required to understand the book content well."
Changing Your Culture to Ensure Cloud Native Transformation Success
(full disclosure:James Mottram, withContainer Solutions - on behalf of the authors, very graciously provided me with a review copy to read).
Today I completed my read of Cloud Native Transformation: Practical Patterns for Innovation.
While this is not intended as a technical book on how to do a cloud native transformation - and may in fact - be of the most use when read by executive leadership, business stakeholders, IT managers - yet it may still be of immense benefit to help orient non-technical and technical members of an organization - and align the thinking and planning of the organization - and in aiding to set and manage expectations.
This is a book that can be primarily of use to two categories of companies:
Those who have not yet started their cloud native transformation journey; and
Those who have stumbled in their cloud native transformation journey - and don't yet know how to recover (or, who do not yet truly understand what went wrong).
I particularly enjoyed the pattern discussions in each chapter - but found the case studies in chapters 14 ("Building a bank in a Year: Starling Bank Case Study"), and 15 ("Welcome to the Jungle: Adidas Cloud Native Transformation Case Study") - to be particularly interesting.
Chapters in the book include:
What is Cloud Native?
The Human Challenge of Cloud Native
What's the Pattern? Architecture, Pattern Languages, and Design
Beyond Patterns: Behavior, Biases, and Managing Evolution
Knowing Thyself: The Cloud Matrix Maturity Tool
Tools for Understanding and Using Cloud Native Patterns
Patterns for Strategy and Risk Reduction
Patterns for Organization and Culture
Patterns for Development and Process
Patterns for Infrastructure and Cloud
Applying the Patterns: A Transformation Design Story, Part 1
Applying the Patterns: A Cloud Native Transformation Design, Part 2
Common Transformation Challenges
Building a bank in a Year: Starling Bank Case Study
Welcome to the Jungle: Adidas Cloud Native Transformation Case Study
(There's also an Epilogue, and an appendix: A. Library of Patterns)
One of the hardest parts of implementing change is changing culture - this is the book you need to help you with that critical part of the cloud native transformation journey.
