Coding and being productive

By Nick Hortovanyi

I still cut code! Yes, and I enjoy doing so. But many people, have never learnt to or have forgotten how to and the mere thought of writing a computer program is considered to be an inane task, that should be given to others.

When its given to others, a considerable amount of effort is required to translate domain knowledge into a form that the developer can learn from and then use to write the application. Most people underestimate the amount of effort involved here, the complexity of writing down, I mean really spelling out in its simplest form what needs to be achieved and hence do not put the effort into the required activities. This leads to a mismatch of expectations and systems developed that don't meet the dreams and aspirations of the original requestors.

How do you fix it? The simplest way (forgetting politics and previous training) is to get the people with domain knowledge to be stronger participants in the construction of the system. Am I saying that they should cut code? Yes!

They will understand what is feasible and realistic to be achieved. Far too often, I see one sentence requirements, being one of many functional requirements, that upon further investigation would require their own system to satisfy.

I saw today an interesting post on 3quarksdaily where a US College will be training Journalists also in IT. That is combining the skill sets, so Journalists will be code savvy.

Where else does this issue exist? It actually exists in ICT itself, where Business Analysts, in Analytics focused organisations, have developed strong skills in Spreadsheets (eg Excel) but can't write programs to harness data from other sources (eg online data from government or other providing organisations). What happens when the volume of data grows to Terabyte or greater sizes? Are these guys going to be able to process the data in Excel? More importantly are they going to be able to respond in a timely manner to ensure the Analytics that they produce give you a competitive advantage?

There is a wealth of new information being created that can be consumed through electronic means over the internet by writing a computer program. He who can leverage it in a timely manner has an advantage.

Tags coding productivity ict programming knowledge   |  Comments 0

Walled communities can lead to "know how" knowledge in Portals

By Nick Hortovanyi

Early generation portals, are characterised by their brochure like nature in a one way communication with the audience. The audience, normally regardless of their interests is presented with the same content. There is some divergence based on a funnel process to more specific content but this may take a number of  interactions and reading of pages with a great chance of losing the person before they reach the desired content, if indeed that content exists.

However, a major issue can be that there is little implicit knowledge (described by Michael Polanyi) in this content relating to the activity that the person reading it, is trying to achieve. This "know how" knowledge is in general transfered between individuals, through interaction that takes into account the context of not only the environment at hand, but the activity.

This is fine when everyone is located in the same geographic place, but with todays distributed workforces this rarely happens. And this phenomenon  is somewhat compounded with composite business structures. That is when a number of organisations through an ecosystem are engaging to complete an activity. Ideally all persons engaged in this activity, would be located on the same floor, in the same building but this rarely happens.

I mentioned previously that "A portal is not a replacement for "know-how" knowledge.", by this I was talking about the early generation portals that are one way in their communication of content, this content is normally explicit knowledge, in that it is easy to communicate. What's missing, is that tacit knowledge!

But to achieve this through a portal you need to know who the person is that is looking at the content, they can no longer be anonymous. They need to be an identity, a known person, on that portal that can be repeatably authenticated. So now that they have an identity they can become part of a community, where their identity can engage with others.

This is a more costly exercise though then generation one portals and requires an investment to proceed.

The combination of collaborative technology, eg presence awareness and advanced personalisation, as well as recommendation engines, with the ability for all to write or communicate their own content and ideas, can improve the satisfaction of the engagement of not only your staff, but of your trading partners. Improving the intimacy of the engagement through a walled community, establishes trust with those players as it is showing the extent of the flow of the knowledge that has been given in faith.

Is your portal a generation one portal? If so, how do you view the value of more advanced generation portals to the enabling of future innovation in and around your organisation?

Do you have walled communities to improve the implicit knowledge in your portal?

Tags knowledge portal community tacit   |  Comments 2

A Portal is not a replacement for "know-how" knowledge

By Nick Hortovanyi

I'm seeing an interesting phenomenon developing in the IT industry where an immediate reaction to uncertainty regarding a question, is direction to a section of a corporate Portal. This is seeming to be the mantra in interacting with the larger vendors, where the shear volume of information is daunting.

I've sat through a number of presentations where lots of effort was spent directing me to a particular section, upon finding it and investigating the material, I've found that it is out of date and does not relate to the material just presented. Personally I think, if such effort is to be made to direct people their, the information has to be up to date and relevant now, not in three months. They won't return back.

There are added dimensions appearing as well, related to people's current level of knowledge and experience to a topic, subject or meme.

A portal helps to facilitate communication and finding knowledge. Where a great portal stands out is when through using it, it helps facilitate activity in a way that supplements the "know-how" knowledge of the participants. To achieve this it still means that people need to communicate, a portal can't be used as the universal answer to eveyone's problems and questions.

 

Tags content portal collaboration knowledge   |  Comments 0