The death of the Pink Floyd saxophonist Dick Parry got me thinking about the band's lyric, “miner for truth and delusion”, which in turn reminded me about 'desire paths' in system design...

Like a road atlas, an ‘intersection map’ gives you a good starting point when trying to understand how an IT system actually behaves.

Systems analysis and design must consider not just how something is/should be now, but also what it might become.

Essentially, ‘dynamic’ approaches must describe the roads that could be taken, not just how a specific destination can be reached...

There’s an old political adage to the effect that, “If you're explaining, you’re losing.”

But while the sentiment may be well-founded for politics, its wider application has always bothered me, especially in the world of IT.

“God is in the details,” declared the German-American architect and designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

But for IT systems it might be more appropriate to highlight the importance of the ‘gaps’...

Resolutions come thick and fast at this time of year: “must eat less…”, “must drink less…” or, more positively, “must do more…”

This year, I have a specific IT resolution...

It’s the time of year when even the most scientific and rational of us might just be prepared to put aside those traits and partake in a little emotional and religious indulgence.

When IT first started – or more precisely, just after it started, when it realised it needed to get organised – it borrowed heavily from the processes used in civil engineering. 

One way to answer this question might be to consider AI in the same way as any other job applicant. After all, it’s effectively ‘interviewing’ for a position.

So, it seems fair to ask the same questions that might be asked of a ‘natural intelligence’ candidate...

Why operational metrics based on interaction data are critical in helping organisations to understand their current operations, and to predict and plan for what might happen in the future.