Facing up to parallelism: Multicore means today’s HPC is tomorrow’s general purpose” by Martin Banks The Register has an interesting article on the International Supercomputing Conference keynote speech by Burton Smith, who used to be Chief Scientist at Cray and now works at Microsoft. Smith believes that parallel computing, now the domain of mostly High Performance Computing (HPC) and Grid …
Structured Process vs. Drift: A Question of Worklevel?
Claudio Ciborra, who unfortunately died too early recently, left a rich quantity and breadth of writings on information systems from a sociological perspective. Here I look at one of thisClaudio Ciborra. 2002. “Design, Kairos and Affection“. From Managing as Designing: Position Papers [?], Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University. … if speed is the main characteristic of this activity, then in …
How Standardization Creates Dis-Order
What happens when you move to standardization? In IT, we’re pushed to do single server loads, unified single-sign on systems, international PKI based Role Based Access Control, and all types of other forms of simplifying, rationalizing and standardizing. But no one ever stops to ask, Does standardizing in IT really make life easier? Not “no one” exactly. Because two researchers …
Change Management, IT, Improvisation and What Work Really Is
After recently finishing a gig with a company that has hit a spate of bad luck, both self-inflicted and environmental, I have taken to reading. And as always when I read, I like to meander aimlessly through the thoughts of disparate thinkers who have nothing in common except that they caught my fancy for the moment. So my apologies to …
IT Models as Transitional Objects
David Wastell, who was Senior Lecturer in information systems at University of Manchester, points out that information systems development (ISD) projects are learning endeavors, a movement from one state to another. This learning therefore creates organizational anxiety. He says that models and other IT project deliverables can function as emotional transitional space, using the Tavistock use of the term. ISD …
Using Mobile Phone Numbers For ID
In an attempt to thwart spammers, Google Mail has started using mobile phone numbers to provide customers with gmail invitations. This is an interesting development, one that has been predicted for at least since the miniaturizaion of mobile telephones. With number portability in the United States, this finally becomes a possibility for many corporations. Mobile numbers stay with you. Although …
Offshore Outsourcing: Undeniable Failure?
One the biggest problems facing outsourcing projects stems from the cost savings themselves. Most companies determine the size and level of a project or work by its cost. They don’t assign work based upon its strategic value or (following Dr. Jaques and Lord Brown) on a measure of complexity. They simply assign it based on cost. Let’s look at what this does for outsourcing work.
Replacing Management With Project Management Is Disastrous
CIO (Australia) Magazine had an interesting article last month by Sue Bushell on Information Technology (IT) organizations and their spectacular failure to the business [“Just Deserts”, 2005 May 5]. Bushell quoted Kathryn Cason of Requisite Organization International Institute on the problems of IT being caused by the organizational structure itself: The fact that IT has primarily been pushed into a …
Retraining Mainframe COBOL Programmers to Object-Oriented Java Programming, via Requisite Organization
A few weeks ago, I talked about the basics of Requisite software developmen and organizational design affects the quality of software projects. Today, I will continue that, answering Paul’s questions about retoolling a mainframe shop to object-oriented programming (OOP). Computer solution groups within companies have different names, often from when they started. Management Information Systems (MIS) and Data Processing Center …
Requisite Organization in Software Development & Information Technology
Software development groups almost always form a shadow hierarchy or pecking order of merit. Elliott Jaques’s theory of Requisite Organization explains why.