Transport Hmmmmm

I am quite glad to have moved down to south London.  Once I got over the mental block of crossing the river I found that I was quite relieved to be able to avoid the tube.  I have been on the tube system now for over 15 years and I had not realised how bad it had got.  On the whole I have spent time on the District line which I had down to a fine art and managed to get a seat at Mile End every day.  Then I moved to Wapping where I had the misfortune to have to take the Jubilee line.  I now have the luck to be able to travel on overground to Victoria.

The first benefit is that it is so much nicer to be able to work on the train (albeit 10 to 15 min journey).  I have a phone signal and I can get through most of my email by the time I arrive.  It is also nice to be able to see the world and get fresh air.

But I have noticed two pieces of clear evidence that the tube system is basically about to break.  The first is the Jubilee line.  Already running at way over capacity during rush hour it is going to have to face the Olympics.  It will simply melt down.  The image to the world will be very poor.  The stations are impressive but the line simply cannot cope with the volumes.  Add to that signal and train failures and you get massive issues on a weekly basis.

The second clear sign is Victoria station.  On a daily basis the gates to the tube are shut with queues blocking most exits from the station.  The tube station cannot cope with the volumes.

Neither line appears to have any plans for remediation (that I am aware of).  Station upgrades are nearly all cosmetic.   The economy does not appear to have the appetite for big projects still and it is clear that even if major projects were to be initiated they will not be completed until post critical meltdown.

There is no room on the roads.  London is going to face difficult times.  Rents continue to rise, property prices are growing (today announced average 450K) still.  Unemployment is rising.  Transport is a misery, traffic is now a nightmare with regular gridlocks.  My trip from South London to Tower Bridge (probably a matter of 5 miles max) took 2 hours by car a few weeks ago.

Maybe this is the signal to start evening out and finding other areas of the country to populate.  Rather than a minimal attempt to move gov jobs out of London, perhaps there should be a proper attempt to move business to other parts of the country.

Architect

A friend of mine asked me to provide some advice to an IT architect that had just got into the 'business'.  I wrote an email to the guy and my friend suggested it was quite good and I should publish it.  So here it is.

I am not sure I can talk much about what it is to be an architect as I have never really architected anything at any point in my career.  I have spent most of my career being a bridge between business and technology.   The ability to be able to interpret from both sides to the other is key.   Get that skill down and you will be successful.  Many projects fail because business and technology are like oil and water.

I have had a number of good architects work for me over the years and I give them the same advice each time.  Get out!  Architecture is largely technology dependant and changes year after year.  So your knowledge of any given architecture and approaches (TOGAF etc) can only be as long as the longevity of the architecture or approach itself.  This means that architects have a difficult career.  They have to learn and relearn all the time.  The trouble is that new architects leave university every day and they know their stuff and the latest tech well, are twice as energetic and work for half the money.

So there are very few old architects out there and I could probably pick only a handful who have gone on to be head of their profession in a company.  You are speaking to two (Wayne and Jerry) and I could pick two or three more in IBM and Cap Gem etc.  But they are few and far between.

So what to do?

1) Learn how to best use technology to solve business problems.  Less worry about what the tech is (in detail).  Leave that to suppliers.

2) Know enough to spot bul***t from suppliers.  Knowing enough to spot problems early.

3) Leadership.  Business needs to be led.  Understand the difference between management and leadership and you will do well.

4) Structure.  The key word for me was 'enough'.  Each situation and client is different.  Taking methodologies and blindly applying them causes huge issues.  The ability to gauge a client and understand the level of structure and formality needed is vital.  To much (applying TOGAF to an SME) or to little (free for all in a corporation) will mean failure.

5) Understand business cases and TCO.  So few architects do.  It leads to massive overspend and wastage.  There is always a tendency to try and save money only to find that you end up adding to cost as old stuff is never switched off. SOA can be one of those traps.  Integration layers another.

6) Cost of change.  As per 5.  Everyone underestimates the cost of change. Its not the costs of the licenses that gets you, its the overheads of change such as test etc.  It is never calculated well and drives huge cost into the org.

7) Test costs.  Look at initial test costs and then the incremental ones.   Regression testing is a huge burden and costs a lot.  The more features one adds to systems after initial build means that regression burden just grows and grows.  Get whole life testing costs sorted (automation).

IT outsourcing is hard.  You cannot expect to just throw the IT needs over the wall to a supplier and expect it to work.  Most of the challenges come from poor contracts.  A useful skill is to learn contracts.  So many times they are left to people who have no clue about what they are buying.  

Learn to read them and ensure that the supplier delivers what they are contractually required to do.  So often the answers are in the contract to solve the issues.  

Suppliers are £ led.  Only £ led and any other motivation is just sales nonsense.  They are there to deliver but not at the expense of the profit. So you need to work with them to ensure that they make their £ and deliver. That’s the hard one as they regularly under bid and try to cut back on quality to meet the £ and the delivery.

Thats about it.  If you can do that intuitively then you will go far.

All in it together

I am not sure I like the rallying cry of an old Etonian.  When times are hard what is not needed is some posh bloke to remind everyone one we will ride out the storm together.  Really?  Is that the school of team work that gave us 'we are all in it together'.  With some of us in it deeper than the rest.  Some of us will be riding it out in our mortgage free living with second homes abroad.  And some of us won't.  Some of us will have no jobs and no way for our kids to own their own home for at least a decade.  And some of us won't.  Some of our businesses can issue bonds to help get through the credit crunch.  And some of us can't.