Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Consulting is episodic. That works better for consultants than consulting companies.

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Consulting is an episodic line of work. That’s great for the individual consultant because of the sheer variety it provides: different ind...
Monday, March 31, 2025

Tech services firms are aggressively applying AI in delivery. They aren’t ready for the consequences of cannibalizing their business model.

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Technology services firms are going heavy on AI in delivery of services. This is motivated by need: services have been a tough market for ...
Friday, February 28, 2025

American manufacturers have forgotten Deming's principles. Their software teams never learned them.

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American manufacturing struggled with quality problems in the 1970s and 1980s. Manufacturers got their house in order with the help of W. E...
Friday, January 31, 2025

We knew what didn’t work in software development a generation ago. They’re still common practices today.

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In the not too distant past, software development was notorious for taking too long, costing too much, and having a high rate of cancellatio...
Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Yes, the future is digital. More importantly, it's asset light.

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The 20th century company acquired capital assets (property, plant and equipment); employed a large, low skilled secondary workforce to produ...
Saturday, November 30, 2024

Industrial firms are struggling with policy change. They can be designed to respond to change.

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News media have been trying to interpret the economic and commercial ramifications that will come about as a result of the US elections earl...
Thursday, October 31, 2024

Bosses at troubled companies say they want growth through innovation. They prefer growth through girth.

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The headlines are heavy with iconic companies that have hit the skids recently, from Starbucks, to Boeing, to Intel. All have relatively n...
Monday, September 30, 2024

It isn’t “return to office.” It’s “malicious destruction of trust.”

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Return-to-office mandates continue to trickle in, and every now and again a prominent employer makes a headline-grabbing decision that all e...
Saturday, August 31, 2024

For years, tech firms were fighting a war for talent. Now they are waging war on talent.

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In the years immediately following the dot-com meltdown, there was more tech labor than there were tech jobs. That didn’t last long. By 20...
Wednesday, July 31, 2024

US automakers are struggling with electrification. They won’t have that luxury bringing autonomy to market.

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Four years ago today, I blogged about the difficulty automakers faced in transitioning to electric vehicles , specifically that there were c...
Sunday, June 30, 2024

The yield curve is inverted. Tech's problem is asset price inflation.

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The business of custom software development is, at its core, an asset business. Software development is the business of converting cash to ...
Friday, May 31, 2024

I can explain it to you, but I can't comprehend it for you

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I’ve given my share of presentations over the years. I am under no illusions that I am anything more than a marginal presenter. My present...
Tuesday, April 30, 2024

The era of ultra low interest rates is over. Tech has painful adjustments to make.

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Interest rates have been climbing for two years now. The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday with the headline the days of ultra l...
Sunday, March 31, 2024

Don’t queue for the ski jump if you don’t know how to ski

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I’ve mentioned before that one of my hobbies is lapidary work. I hunt for stone, cut it, shape it, sand it, polish it, and turn it into art...
Thursday, February 29, 2024

Patterns of Poor Governance

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As I mentioned last month, many years ago I was toying around with a governance maturity model. Hold your groans, please. Turns out there ...