Loving Legacy

EPISODE SUMMARY

How can we make sure we are all "on the same page"? By speaking the same language.

In this episode I am examining the use of digital language in organisations when it comes to running projects and in our understanding of information systems. How to be more effective when it comes to communicating with stakeholders and what exactly are 'stakeholders' anyway?

I talk about buzzwords, about acronyms and how to keep the project team engaged. I hope you like it and you can also download my free guide to digital language linked below.

EPISODE NOTES

You can download my free guide to Digital Language.

Sign up the mailing list or get in touch with me from the website.

QUOTES

"Technology moves quickly, new words are getting invented all the time" RB

"with information systems and software systems, we can often hear language that we don’t understand" RB

"Speaking digital language can be as daunting as speaking a foreign language." RB

"change sometimes brings commitment" RB

"Anyone who has an interest should be included, and the language you use is therefore important to gain the greatest reach" RB

EPISODE SUMMARY

I look at the organisation and its impact on your systems - remember that systems are not just what you build or have built for you, it's also the people. Conway's Law and continuous learning can help us make sense of digital transformation.

EPISODE NOTES

Understand that your business needs are met not as a whole, but by individuals and departments. Those individuals and departments shape the systems they use - they create them all the time. Your IT systems and your IT systems change process had better recognise this.

QUOTES

I quote Melvin Conway: "Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure."

"the most important thing you can do before taking on a new software or IT project as an organisation is to zoom out" RB

EPISODE SUMMARY

In the last episode we jumped straight into automations and how they can sometimes make our life more difficult. This time we take a look at systems - all types of systems - and understand the human element that made them.

EPISODE NOTES

Since January 2022 I've been thinking long and hard about automation - but it was clear that automation was just a piece of what was making me think. Systems provide opportunities for automation but they can be manual or they can already be 'automatic' or built in IT. So how do we work with systems and understand those which already exist in our business?

QUOTES

" if you're troubleshooting an issue, the best way to understand is to change something, note down the difference" RB

"This applies across the board, whether we're multinational small company, an individual who's looking at their Etsy shop or looking at their WordPress installation and saying, Okay, what can I do to make this better?" RB

"They all have been put together by somebody sitting down and thinking about it, writing down an idea and maybe sharing it with a colleague or a friend" RB

"Learn to understand and explore the systems that have been created for you, they are imperfect, they were created after all by humans, so don’t expect them to work the whole time" RB

EPISODE SUMMARY

Before you get obsessed with automation it's worth thinking a little about what you're doing to your systems. Do you even need automation yet? In my first ever episode I introduce some concepts to consider in your automations.

EPISODE NOTES

This was inspired by some discussions on The Business of Authority podcast around the 'Gravitational Pull of Systems' and how it can be hard not to jump straight into configuration.

Inspired me to start the podcast and also write a short blog on Brittle Systems.

QUOTES

"the more you connect, the more that you're kind of building in your business process to that way of working" RB

"don't implement a whole system or automation around that, just to serve five people, because the amount of time you're going to spend implementing it way outweighs the amount of time you're going to spend actually doing that work" RB

"buy out of the box and use out of the box" RB

"do not automate too soon" RB