For someone who’s been technical for their entire working life and who still sells such skills to clients, it may seem odd that this blog contains so many non-technical posts. The simple answer is that these are the things I think I can help to fix longer term.
A great deal of technical work is largely a question of knowledge, pattern recognition, and experience. Once you have seen the same types of problems often enough, staying current is relatively straightforward 1.
After it is established in each client that you genuinely have been here before and understand the need, working through issues becomes a matter of dealing with one technical problem after another using either the client’s chosen platforms or whichever best-of-breed solution is suitable 2. The path to delivery is usually proven, even if the exact solution is not yet known.
Integration, delivery, and many of the wider challenges around technology don’t work the same way. The difficult part is not the code or the platforms. It is the human behaviour, the organisational design, and the processes wrapped around the technology. Those are the areas where progress is slower, resistance is higher, and inefficiency is often tolerated. They are also the areas where I believe many organisations could make meaningful improvements.
That is why you see so many non-technical posts here. Despite being a geek by preference and by nature, these are the problems I now find that clients find the hardest to resolve.
There will still be plenty of deeply technical material to come, particularly in the new year.