Retrospective August 2021
This month’s lessons: focusing on fewer things makes it much easier to to stay on schedule (who knew) and having things on a delivery plan that just happen without any focus is kind of missing the point.
Contributing to the digital transformation of the charity sector
I got where I needed to with product requirements for two of the three projects. The third project has a more extended timeline and a slower pace, so will come in time. Also did a little bit of strategy work using Wardley mapping, which has got me thinking.
Learning about innovation, technology, product and design
Finished my dissertation. Which means I’ve finished my masters. It feels weird. Partly because it’s been a big part of my life for two years and now all that pressure is suddenly gone. It’s going to leave a big gap. And partly because I can’t do anything more about the final grade I get. It’s out of my hands now. A lesson I need to take into whatever I choose to spend my time doing next is that in order to get me to focus, that thing needs to have some external commitment (for my masters that was the money I’d paid) and some future benefit to achieve (which is getting the masters). Other projects I’ve started before haven’t had either of those and I quickly lose interest when I have a new idea.
Wrote weeknotes on schedule every week. I’ve been mixing them up a bit by adding a photo of the week, things I’m grateful for, and what my growth area for the week has been. They continue to be a really good prompt to looking back over the week.
Leading an intentional life
I reached a new level of appreciation for my digital nomad life this month. I started a map to keep track of the places I’ve visited. I saw dolphins, seals and a lizard.
I completely smashed my purposely low target for stiles. I have 348 on stiles.style whereas my target for this month was 315.
I achieved the increase in runway I was aiming for.
All three of these targets are starting to feel out of place on my delivery plan. They just happen without me needing to give them any focus so I think I might drop them and think about whether I should add something else. I still think of them as being part of the goal of leading an intentional life so they should be on my roadmap, but not on the delivery plan.
Process algebra
http://www.mate.tue.nl/mate/pdfs/8509.pdf
Process algebra is the study of distributed or parallel systems by algebraic means. Originating
in computer science, process algebra has been extended in recent years to encompass not just
discrete-event systems, but also continuously evolving phenomena, resulting in so-called hybrid
process algebras. A hybrid process algebra can be used for the specification, simulation, control
and verification of embedded systems in combination with their environment, and for any dynamic
system in general. As the vehicle of our exposition, we use the hybrid process algebra χ (Chi). The
syntax and semantics of χ are discussed, and it is explained how equational reasoning simplifies
tool implementations for simulation and verification. A bottle filling line example is introduced to
illustrate system analysis by means of equational reasoning.
Digital Gardens and Networked Thoughts
Digital gardens
What is a digital garden? Maggie Appleton explains:
Rather than presenting a set of polished articles, displayed in reverse chronological order, these sites act more like free form, work-in-progress wikis. A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete – notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time.
Some digital gardens:
- Anne Laurie Le Cunff
- Maggie Appleton
- Andy Matuschak
- Joel Hooks
- Kezie Todd
- Patrick Tanguay
- Salman Ansari
- Conor Dewey
- Christian Tietze
- Chuck Grimmett
- Tom Critchlow
Digital Garden concepts:
- Unfinished notes
- Evolving ideas
- Connected by context
Types of networks
There are three types of networks: centralised, decentralised and distributed. Which one is best for organising ideas?
The problem with ‘networked’ thoughts, is that networks don’t represent time, so as thoughts evolve, how can a network show how an idea started, where it currently is, and how it has changed? So is there a another way to organise notes and ideas that helps to show change over time?
Digital Gardens also don’t seem to deal with lots of thoughts very well. Anne Laure Le Cunff mentions the issue with the volume of ideas.
Kitchens can tell us a lot about the digital transformation of organisations
Of all the rooms in our homes, the kitchen has been through the most change over the last hundred years. The introduction of running water, the electrification of domestic products, more consumer goods and the invention of the supermarket to make those goods available, and connecting of domestic goods to the internet. Driven by convenience for those using kitchens and competitive supply-and-demand market forces, the modern kitchen shows us what effective transformation could look like. Contrast this transformation with that we see taking place in our work environments and we can see that the way we think about digital transformation is all wrong.
Digital transformation in companies is driven by old thinking. It is usually approached like any other IT project; budget secured upfront, eighteen month project plan produced, new infrastructure procured, rolled-out to end-users who didn’t have a say. Products and systems are implemented to meet the needs of organisation, with little thought given to how easy it will be to use. Taking our lesson from the transformation of the kitchen we can see that one-sided approaches driven by business needs only will fail. Transformation means transforming the thinking and the technology.
The shift to digital thinking happens as the old-school IT managers step aside for digital managers with experience of consumer-focused digital products and treating the end user as the customer. The shift to digital products happens as B2B software providers recognise the shift in the market and focus on end-user needs and offering a great user experience.
These two interdependent changes will bring about the digital transformation companies have been looking for. The transformation of the kitchen taught us that it takes both sides of the supply and demand equation to balance in order for transformation to happen. The organisations have to want digital products that provide excellent user experience, and the providers have to develop them. When the CRM is as easy to use as Netflix, and the finance system as easy to use as a Stripe, then we can call digital transformation a success.