ITXtreme with Paul Ryan » March 2006

March 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)

I Hate Users

TAGS: Things That Piss Me Off

Has this interaction ever happened to you:

User: "We want to start billing the customers by ..... (completely new way of billing, timing, etc.)

IT Pro: "That shouldn't be too hard -- write down what you want it to do, and we'll whip up a timetable."

...1 Week Passes...

User: "We're billing the new way starting today."
IT Pro: "WTF? Where are the requirements?"
User: "If you had built it right the first time, it probably could handle what we want to do today."

And so on.

Sound familiar? It's as if the user/product manager/end consumer/sponsor/whatever and the IT Pro are speaking a completely different language. A few cycles of this game, and you realize why the laborious labyrith of requirements, sign-offs, user acceptance testing software development wheel got started.

No matter how many times I run into this, I still get pissed off. If the damm users would only get a clue. There has to be a better way.

And there is. I suspect, however, that newer methods of rapid development and evolution of requirements (and verification of requirements with the end user) require TOO MUCH EFFORT for the lazy user. You actually have to think about what you want in software, and specify it clearly and frequently. But there's hope -- approaches such as Ruby-On-Rails help the rapid iteration and prototyping camp quite a lot. I guess I'm still an optimist at heart.

Posted by Paul T. Ryan on March 16, 2006 08:41 AM

March 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The Latest Hype Machine - Web 2.0

TAGS: Things That Piss Me Off

The Gartner Group has attempted to describe and quantify the technology 'hype cycle' -- a quite funny, yet all too realistic description of how new technologies are triggered, oversold, crash, then come home to roost (i.e. become a productive part of the technology toolkit).

Gartner has some great material on this -- worth the read.

Unfortunately, every time I see things like the crazy hyperbole surrounding the Web 2.0, I break out in a rash -- has everyone forgotten the hype of the late '90s?

Apparently not.

The crap that I see now being flogged as 'new' is astounding. Sites that have a little whizz-bang AJAX, or combine data sources for some interesting displays (the 'mashups'), are all now 'revolutionary'. What a load of hype. As if graphical display technologies, no matter how ubiquitously adopted, have ever really changed the state of computing. Mind me now -- I'm now talking about the great ascii-text shell to GUI divide, but rather the constant evolution from X11 to Aqua (my favorite). People are missing the point.

None of these businesses are sustainable -- their business plans all look like:

1 - Develop some unpronouncable name for the company
2 - Throw together some set of data and code to look cool
3 - 'Create' a revenue model based on AdSense, and most importantly,
4 - Sell it to Yahoo!

Try it yourself! It's liberating.

The point is -- the survivors of the first crash of the Internet craze have realized that the old Internet model -- get people to stay on you site forever in a sort of sticky goo-like mess of capabilities (read AOL) won't work, and that opening up your information for widespread use (syndication) is the only way to survive. The forerunners of this were people like Amazon who opened up their platform, and Google in the Google API. The re-discovery of XML in RSS, and the idea that we could have our systems exchange information (rather than rendering the data for me on a site) is the real revolution. And revolution it is -- not in the way that the 1,000's of new startups believe, but rather in the way we all design systems (either for the Internet or within the Firewall).

That is the real story here -- not the cool social networking sites, Google Maps applications, or other crap. Liberate your data, and the world is your oyster.

Posted by Paul T. Ryan on March 14, 2006 04:56 PM

March 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Hey There Now

TAGS: Introduction

Welcome to ITXtreme, a mostly irreverent, hopefully enjoyable romp through a variety of technology topics that tickle my fancy (or more like, raise my ire).

Over the past 20 years, I've helped start a few businesses (some incredibly successful, some smoking holes in the ground), have seen the development and deployment of technology from both a business, as well as manufacturer point of view (in the belly of the beast, if you will), and have a ton of scars to show for it.

I've seen the occasional flashes of genius, lots of hard work and good intentioned people and projects, and (more interestingly) the rank idiocy of technologies, technology based businesses, businesses, management -- you name it. The funny thing is -- things seem to repeat in patterns, and most people simply forget (or conveniently forget) when the pattern repeats itself. Things like:

What are all of these newly funded Web 2.0 businesses going to do for revenue?

And

Does anyone remember Larry Ellison's net device? Did it replace the desktop?

And

Why does everybody hate their IT departments?

and similar rants.

Let the games begin.

Posted by Paul T. Ryan on March 10, 2006 03:50 PM