General Sir David Richards, Britain's most senior military officer recently published a reading list (of 90 books) for candidates to the UK's Defence Academy. I was interested to see books like "Blink" (instinctive decision-making) and "Thinking Fast and Slow" (behavioral decision-making) on the list. Maybe "Nudge" should be there too. Also of note is General Sir Rupert Smith's book "The Utility … [Read more...]
Spreadsheets at it again
Another week, another embarrassing spreadsheet error. Two Harvard professors conceded that they made a spreadsheet "coding error" in analysis that formed the basis for their recent book. James Kwak, in an article where he describes spreadsheet modeling problems at JPMorgan, said (of Excel) Because it's so easy to use, the creation of even important spreadsheets is not restricted to people … [Read more...]
Challenges for open data
Government open data initiatives, such as the US' data.gov and the UK' data.gov.uk are to be applauded, but there are still many challenges to be overcome. I'd like to outline three important ones. What are the problems? Open data is a bit like a hammer looking for a nail. There needs to be greater transparency about the problems facing government. Politicians are incentivized to present … [Read more...]
Storycraft and confrontation analysis
I've just finished reading Jack Hart's "Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction". Now, if you are going to write a book about writing, it'd better be good---and Hart doesn't disappoint. The book explains how compelling stories are comprised of structured elements. One thing that struck me is how closely these structures and elements are aligned with confrontation … [Read more...]
Systems as “app swarms”
The article "Estimation is Evil" discusses the difficulty of accurately costing software projects---a subject of interest to anyone involved in contract software development. However what struck me most in the article was a discussion of problems with an early, high profile agile project---Chrysler’s C3 payroll project. The author argues that this project failed because it attempted to develop a … [Read more...]