All Posts in Technology

|In: Architecture|Last Updated:

What does building an effective IT organization require?

We’ve been asking and answering that question for the past few weeks (starting here, with business integration; last week we covered process maturity).

What’s next? Technical architecture, which is to say the stuff IT is responsible for building, installing, and maintaining. To line everything up:

  • Business integration is how IT figures out what it’s supposed to provide to the rest of the business.
  • Process maturity is how IT provides it.
  • Technical architecture is what it provides.
  • We’ll wrap things up with Human Performance – the factors and practices that make sure the best people are in place to make sure IT is integrated into the business.

I covered technical architecture in depth in my CIO.com feature, the CIO Survival Guide. The links are here:

So far as the processes and practices required to achieve and evaluate a strong and resilient technical architecture are concerned, these three articles pretty much cover the ground.

Bob’s last word: What these articles don’t cover is (blare of trumpets) … yes, that’s right: the importance of a culture of architecture to complement the culture of process discussed last week.

And I don’t have anything new to say on the culture front, so just re-read what I wrote there.

That makes this week’s KJR pretty short. Which is okay – I’m trying hard to follow a piece of advice I’ve both given and received over the years, which is that if I don’t have anything to say I don’t have an obligation to say it.

So instead, I’m going to give in to an irresistible temptation: an observation about Elon Musk’s decision to re-brand Twitter as “X”.

My take, based on nothing but speculation, is that Elon Musk must be the smartest person in the room, no matter what the room is, who’s in it, and what they’re talking about.

Among the consequences is an inability to recognize anyone else’s good ideas.

So I’m imagining a meeting of Twitter’s executive leadership team. The subject is how to turn Twitter into a going concern. Of the ideas floated around, the only one Musk could put his name on is changing Twitter’s name and brand.

Because it was Musk’s idea, it was, by definition, brilliant! Also the only brilliant idea spoken, a natural consequence of Musk having to be the smartest person in the room.

Again, I’m just speculating. But on the other hand, can you offer a plausible alternative explanation?

This week in CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “7 IT consultant tricks CIOs should never fall for.” Fixing what’s broken by breaking what’s fixed plus 6 other common consulting misdeeds.

Comments

|In: Technology|Last Updated:

This week’s KJR Challenge: Read this Microsoft word salad: “Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work – The Official Microsoft Blog” and figure out what Microsoft 365 Copilot is. Or, failing that, figure out what it does.

The linked blog entry was attributed to Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Modern Work & Business Applications.

Which leads to your next KJR Challenge: What on earth does that job title mean?

Meaning no offense, Mr. Spataro, but the only reason I have any confidence that you’re a Live Human Being and not a ChatGPT avatar is that I can usually make heads and tails out of a ChatGPT essay.

That, and that your average ChatGPT essay doesn’t include so many questionable assertions. Examples:

“Humans are hard-wired to dream, to create, to innovate.”

No, we aren’t. To the extent we’re hard-wired to do anything it’s to increase our DNA’s representation in the future population’s gene pool. And even that hard-wired drive is buffered by a bunch of intermediate effects.

“With Copilot, you’re always in control. You decide what to keep, modify or discard. Now, you can be more creative in Word, more analytical in Excel, more expressive in PowerPoint, more productive in Outlook and more collaborative in Teams.”

No. With Copilot we won’t be more creative in Word. With Copilot we mere humans will stop being creators. Copilot will turn us into editors instead.

I have nothing against editors. But editing isn’t creative and isn’t supposed to be creative.

Oh, and by the way, I might not be feeling collaborative; sometimes I don’t feel collaborative for intensely valid reasons. If Copilot were to make me more collaborative in Teams I most definitely wouldn’t be in control.

“With our new copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface — natural language.”

Microsoft apparently buys into Springer’s Law, named after my old friend Paul Springer, who asked, “Why use a picture when a thousand words will do?”

Oh, and by the way, people misunderstand what’s said to them all the time. Why would we expect Copilot to be better at interpreting natural language than we human beings, who have had tens of thousands of years of practice at it.

Just my opinion: Clicking on an icon is faster and more efficient than using sentences to explain what you’re trying to do.

“… every meeting is a productive meeting with Copilot in Teams. It can summarize key discussion points — including who said what and where people are aligned and where they disagree — and suggest action items, all in real time during a meeting.

Okay, this is just silly. Or else, terrifying. Unless Copilot can barge in and mute everyone’s microphone to say, “You’ve made this point thirteen times already, Fred. Please stop so we can move on,” it won’t make meetings more productive.

Copilot “… creates a new knowledge model for every organization — harnessing the massive reservoir of data and insights that lies largely inaccessible and untapped today.”

The ever-helpful Bing implementation of ChatGPT explains that,” A knowledge model is a computer interpretable model of knowledge.” Yes, that’s right. A knowledge model is a model of knowledge. And that’s the best definition of “knowledge model” I could find.

One more: “Uplevel skills. Copilot makes you better at what you’re good at and lets you quickly master what you’ve yet to learn.”

Except that as it turns out, Copilot doesn’t “uplevel” [don’t blame me for this linguistic abomination] anyone’s skills. So far as I can tell it doesn’t show you how to do something. It does whatever-the-task-is for you.

But delegation is a skill, so I guess gaining the ability to delegate to Copilot constitutes “upleveling” your delegation skills.

But it’s a stretch.

Bob’s last word: Don’t get me wrong. A year ago I was impressed with Google’s semantic search capabilities. Now, more and more I’m complementing it with Bing’s generative AI research summarizations. Its abilities are impressive, and I expect Copilot and similar technologies will turn out to be highly consequential.

But as impressive as generative AI is, it also encourages me to be lazy.

For this I don’t need encouragement. And if we’re going to equate laziness and increased productivity … I think we’re going to need a new knowledge model to sell the idea.

Bob’s sales pitch: Every time I email a fresh column to the assembled KJR multitudes, my mailing service drops those subscribers whose emails are bounced due to mailbox full or other errors. The result is a slow but steady erosion of KJR’s subscriber base. The only way to replenish is for subscribers like you to encourage non-subscribers like that guy three cubicles to the left of you to sign up.

How about it?

Now on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “Why IT surveys can’t be trusted for strategic decisions.” All surveys will tell you is whose company you’re keeping.

Comments