Month: September 2018

The Badger cleared a spare room recently and found a long-forgotten Toshiba laptop hiding in the back of a cupboard. Well, it’s called a laptop but it’s more of a ‘transportable’ given its size and weight – perhaps not surprising given the Badger first used it in 1994. Does it still work? Yes. The Badger applied power after doing some checks and surprisingly it started up (slowly) with its built-in 50MB hard-drive screeching unnervingly like a banshee.

The installed Mosaic browser reminded the Badger just how much has changed since the ability to access the internet started arriving on computers in the 1990s. The Badger used Mosaic (and subsequently Netscape) as the standard tool for finding information and knowledge on the internet in those days. Since then, of course, computer, communication and information technology has developed exponentially, and accessing information and knowledge using your choice of modern browser is instantaneous today from any device.

So that’s a good thing isn’t it? Yes. But whereas in the 1990s your browser returned information essentially based only on its search algorithm and the question you asked, today’s returns are additionally influenced by ‘business’ and the desire to grab, manipulate, and keep your attention. Indeed, in an interview on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme recently an ex-Google executive confirmed that today’s digital world is totally focused on this very point. Grabbing and manipulating your attention is apparently the design criterion for creators of today’s apps and platforms. It’s a shame, but these days the giants of social media and the internet know more about you than you know about yourself. That wasn’t the case in 1994!

So what else did finding the old Toshiba remind the Badger of? Two things. Firstly, the speed and impact of change in the IT industry and the world driven by technological advances. The Badger finds it sobering to remember that 25 years ago mobile phones were not widespread, desk top computers and laptops were cumbersome, slow, and had low storage capacity, mobile networks provided voice and SMS, public and work access to the internet was only just blossoming, and social media platforms didn’t exist! ‘Digital Transformation’ is one of today’s hot buzz phrases, but in truth digital transformation has been underway for at least the last 25 years.

Secondly, if you enter the workforce today then the way you currently live and work will change dramatically by the time you are 40 years old. Change driven by technology doesn’t stop then! When you get to 40 and look forward, you’ll realise there’ll be many further changes to the way you live and work before you take your pension. By then you’ll also probably be hoping that Buzz Lightyear and the robots will have taken us all ‘to infinity and beyond…’

British Airways (BA) made headlines recently when it announced that the credit card details of ~380,000 customers were stolen in an attack on its website and app. The company’s share price dropped 2% and the event was a reminder that no organisation, regardless of size or sophistication, is immune to such attacks. Cybersecurity has a high profile. But what is it? The Badger playfully asked friends recently. Many said that it’s anti-virus software, firewalls, encryption, two-factor authentication, software patches, and so on. The Badger, however, learned some years back that it’s much more than this.

The Badger once oversaw a company security department and was tasked to expand the profile and impact of its activities. The department’s staff were expert, hardworking and very professional but they were seen as administrators by others. The Badger learned lots very quickly. Especially that cybersecurity is really the convergence of people, governance, processes and technology into a multi-layered framework to protect an organisation, people, networks and business systems from malicious digital attacks.

The Badger and the department staff set about improving and communicating such a layered framework to have a bigger impact. Anti-virus, firewalls, encryption, passwords and two-factor authentication, and routine software patching were just part of this holistic bigger picture. Progress was helped by executive realisation that new privacy laws were on their way (e.g. GDPR), and that they needed to have good overall security governance, incident, public relations and media management in place to address stakeholder and customer anxieties. Executives had learned from some very public mishandlings of events by other companies! All suggested improvements were approved and fully implemented. Similar things happened in other organisations industry-wide, and today Chief Security or Chief Information Security Officers (CSO/CISO) are the focal points for overall security governance, policies, processes, and practices, including threat detection and defensive measures.

BA seem to have handled the public aspects of their event reasonably well, which implies robustness in their overall security and incident handling framework. However, one thing’s certain. More of such attacks are inevitable. Why? Because people, often very innovative and creative ones, are involved in this delinquency. The Badger learned lots from overseeing a security department. The department lead, a person with decades of security experience, insisted that ‘People are always the weakest link in security’ and the Badger saw this proved many times. Even the most up-standing people can resort to maliciousness or criminality and become a threat when impacted by adverse life, personal or work events.

So, if you’ve read this far then just remember that firewalls, virus software, encryption and so on have their place, but when it comes to real security, you are the weakest link!

Change driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickening and the number of words written about AI – what it is, the technology, impact on economies, politics, democracy, jobs, life etc – expands hour by hour. This piece contributes to the expansion!
A conversation with a neighbour while washing the car morphed into an interesting debate about the future. It touched on AI and its role in driving productivity improvement in companies, particularly large ones. The neighbour thinks AI is just as much a challenge for IT consultancies, systems integrators and outsourcers as it is for companies in other industries. He believes AI will drive significant IT job losses and perhaps an IT sector decline like that experienced in various manufacturing and heavy industries in developed countries in the last decades of the 20th century. The debate didn’t dwell on this, but the Badger has since pondered on a) whether companies in the IT sector are really changing because of AI, and b) if they are, then how can you tell? Today’s blog item was born!

General sentiment, after some research, seems to be that AI will impact many IT administrative jobs, jobs in company finance and legal functions, and front-line support, call centre and help-desk jobs. Some believe that IT infrastructure and application support jobs may ultimately be replaced by machine intelligence and the automatic identification and repair of problems before they occur. If you work in a large IT consultancy, SI or outsourcer in these roles then things look likely to change! Other IT roles appear less at risk provided skills are kept current and relevant. Small companies with good, modern architecture products who can adapt them quickly for AI will be exciting places to work, while bigger companies with legacy products who are not as fleet of foot need to work hard to avoid being left behind.

So, what did the Badger concluded regarding a) and b) above? Regarding a) IT companies often communicate their approach and offerings to meet market trends but say little about the adoption of AI for their own operations. On b), the Badger thinks a company’s profit per employee over time is a useful macro indicator. AI drives productivity improvement so this metric should rise over time. Exploring the metric on a sample of 2016 and 2017 company results implies broadly flat productivity to date, so let’s see what happens to it as AI bites over the next few years.

Are IT sector companies changing due to AI? Perhaps some, but very slowly. The Badger’s neighbour thinks Amazon and Google will ultimately dominate AI technology and the IT services sector with major acquisitions. The Badger hopes he’s wrong…but stranger things have happened.

A friend’s son, who starts employment this week after graduating recently from University, asked this question. The youngster – full of enthusiasm, hungry to succeed and keen to pay off his student loan – wants to move up the career ladder swiftly. The Badger considered many possible answers, but after brief reflection one simple answer stood out, namely ‘Learn how and when to say No!’. The youngster was intrigued and wanted to know what underpinned the answer. The Badger thus described a material event from his own experience.

A senior business leader, one of the Badger’s bosses in a matrixed organisation, was summoned by a client to explain considerable underperformance on a contract. The Badger had drawn attention to this for some time, but the leader had taken no action. The meeting with the client was arranged for the first day of a long-scheduled Badger Summer vacation. The Badger was not material to the contract, but the leader insisted the Badger attend regardless. The Badger didn’t like attending whilst on vacation but felt obliged when adverse comments about loyalty and career progression featured in the leader’s communications.

On the day of the meeting, the leader arranged to meet an hour before the client session to confirm messaging and tactics. Instead the leader used this pre-meeting to unfairly berate and blame the Badger for the whole situation. The Badger was taken aback. The leader’s words were like facing into the full force of a hair dryer! To say the Badger was annoyed is an understatement. The subsequent client meeting, however, was benign, straightforward, and constructive, and the Badger sat there wondering why he was attending on a vacation day.

On the way home afterwards, the Badger decided to ‘Learn how and when to say No!’ better. Since then the Badger said No – and meant it – in many situations to great effect. Did it damage the Badger’s career? No. Was the Badger’s loyalty ever questioned when saying No? No. Did the Badger become disrespected or a ‘negative’ person? No. The pressure described above from some leaders are not unusual but never be afraid of the consequences of saying No. If there are consequences, then question your enterprise’s real values and whether you’re in the right organisation. So, what happened after the client meeting? Issues were resolved, and the senior business leader left their post a few months later.

The youngster said he would not forget the seven-word answer to his question, and the Badger believed him! What would your answer to the question be?

Risk pervades life. We take risks every day; for example, when crossing a road or driving a car. The companies we work for take risks. In fact, they thrive by taking risks and successfully mitigating and managing the consequences. Indeed, large companies usually have mature enterprise-level risk management regimes – see some nuggets here – and employees leading the build, test and delivery of technology-intensive systems normally have instinctive risk management characteristics underpinning their career success. The Badger’s delivery experience has emphasised that while formal risk management processes and controls are important, it’s always the people – project, programme, service and business leaders – that must ultimately decide on what risk to take. After all, it’s people at the end of the day who are responsible for the outcomes of their decisions and pay the price for getting it wrong. Today’s predictable departure of the TSB Bank CEO for a botched migration to a new IT system illustrates the point.

Why has the Badger been thinking about risk? Because the news that an Apple ‘driver-less’ vehicle was rear-ended by another vehicle while waiting for a safe gap to join a freeway in California reinforced the Badger’s belief that a human rather than a computer system must decide on whether to take a risk or not.

‘Driver-less’ vehicle technology is advanced, and – if you believe the hype – there’ll be millions of such vehicles on roads within ten years. Big auto and tech companies apparently have up to ~100 vehicles each currently under test on public roads. That’s a very small number compared with daily traffic volumes, and anyone who’s delivered technology-intensive projects and programmes knows that a) things can change dramatically as volumes rise, b) non-technological things like politics and laws can cause serious delay, and c) ‘introduction to service’ at scale with end-users is always challenging! Accordingly, and you may vehemently disagree, the Badger feels that ‘driver-less’ vehicles are over-hyped and the likelihood of significant numbers on UK public roads within 10 years is low.

Why does the Badger hold this view? It’s nothing to do with how good the technology is. It’s because humans have managed risk, and gained excitement from doing so, since the Stone Age. It’s in our make-up. It’s part of why our species is successful. Humans have always used available information before taking a course of action, so it’s unlikely we’ll be psychologically comfortable with completely delegating our risk decisions to computer systems, no matter how clever they are.

In a world that seems increasingly chaotic, it doesn’t feel right to allow advanced, self-learning computer systems to decide on the risks we take in our daily routines. Whatever next! Will machines take all the fun out of life? Hopefully not, but perhaps the future that underpinned the Terminator film in 1984 isn’t that far away after all…