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Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:37:20 +0100

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer's competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.

Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done--is essential.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.

via agilemanifesto.org

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WiseStamp - Email Signature

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:35:04 +0100

http://www.wisestamp.com/wp-content/themes/octoberspecial/ver2homepage/toplogo.png

I thought this was quite amusing. Just another clever html email signature tool you might say - but makes it easy for a normal person to put it together. It can bring in your last tweet and last blog entry - along with some other social media choices - making it easy to spread your brand. I would imagine businesses would like something like this for their email signature. If you are an SEO guy - you might wonder why they make your links rel="nofollow" - which tells google not to follow the link - I like all the juice I can get. Its a browser plugin - so its a snap to install. The app isnt yet available for IE. After adding features to your signature - it does the rest. The signature shows up in your gmail or yahoo email automatically. Join the party at http://www.wisestamp.com/

Jeffrey Blake
Simplify Organize Finish
Enterprise Architect
Social Business Technologist
650 483-3142

My profiles:
The Brand Hammer: Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You will Ever Need

Latest tweet: Open-Source Facebook Competitor Diaspora to Launch Sept. 15 http://ow.ly/2x7Nz

Follow @Jeffrey_Blake Reply Retweet 22:08 Aug-30

Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You will Ever Need

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:28:50 +0100

If you are looking to reinvent yourself or just want to tune up your confidence and job hunting skills - you might check out this quick reading graphic novel about Johnny Bunko. In the story Johnny learns what it takes to make a successful career. It can be summarized in 6 lessons.

There is no plan
Think strengths not weaknesses
It's not about you
Persistence trumps talent
Make excellent mistakes
Leave an imprint.

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need

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Social Media’s Critical Path: Relevance to Resonance to Significance

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:25:28 +0100

Before creating or distributing any social object, ask yourself a few important questions:

- What value am I introducing into the mix?

- What makes this object worthy of attention?

- What action do I want to inspire?

- How does this contribute to our standing within each community?

- How can I make this shareable?

content and image via briansolis.com

Brian Solis reminds us what goes into a social object among other things

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Dreaming Big and Outside the Box

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:18:43 +0100

My friend Gordon just said on Facebook that he is "Dreaming Big and Outside the Box". More of us need to do this. I have a small slew of near genius friends - but very few dream big. Its not like they are living lives of "quiet desperation" - but close to it. Even the Zen Master gets tired of small pleasures. Sometimes we have to break out of the box and do something that stretches us personally - which is my definition of "spiritual".

Sometimes we need to put on the big suit and do something remarkable.

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Gartner 2010 Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:17:27 +0100

Recently Gartner released the 2010 Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture (EA). It's an interesting report. I'm not sure if there are really any surprises here but it worth looking at the macro themes of the report.

You can find additional resources here:

Full Article: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=clientFriendlyUrl&id=1402513

Press Release: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1417513

Source: Gartner July 2010

What the report reveals is a set of macro themes for Enterprise Architecture.

Traditional Enterprise Architecture that is technology focused and driven has become mainstream.

A fundamental shift in the architecture community from IT Architecture to true Enterprise Architecture where Business Architecture is a first class citizen. EA is past the hype of the standard lip service of "We align IT with Business" and we are actually doing it.

Business focused EA that is executed through Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA), Business Process Management (BPM), Capability analysis and modeling, and EA Performance Management

Frameworks are not as mature as they could be. This capability for EA is estimated by Gartner to be 10+ years out until productivity is realized. As you have heard from me in past posts and articles, I believe there is a level of pragmatism that is lost on the EA Tool providers. If they nail that, they will shorten that time to productivity significantly.

While there is mainstream adoption of Enterprise Architecture, the maturity level is still low. This is shown in the Hype Cycle survey it stated that 73% of EA organizations aspire to be "mature". Does this mean that those 73% are not mature?

Gartner has published the following abstract to the EA Hype Cycle

"The artificial walls between business and IT are crashing down, and EA is the bridge to integrate business and IT," said Philip Allega, Research Vice President, Gartner. "EA's original promise was its ability to provide future safe guidance given the desires and vision of an organisation's senior leadership team. As IT roles shift away from technology management to enterprise management, EA is suited to bring clarity to these blurred boundaries, and, by 2015, increased adoption of EA processes and uses by business will further IT's alignment with the organisation's culture, future-state vision and delivery of business value outcomes."

Early-generation EA, situated on the right side of the Hype Cycle, is marked by long-standing and well-practiced approaches such as enterprise technology architecture (ETA) and architecture assurance that have been supported by traditional and federated approaches to EA. While these practices help to direct tactical IT operations, they are often supported without a business future-state vision and, as such, limit the ability for organisations to achieve and demonstrate significant business value.

"Overall, EA slipped into the Trough of Disillusionment, along with EA tools, because EA practitioners couldn't or wouldn't push EA efforts to become integrated with the business, drawing an invisible wall between the business and IT," said Allega.

As EA practitioners have become more business-focused and organisations have become more hyperconnected, new approaches of managed diversity and middle-out have emerged on the Trigger slope, forming the latest generation of EA. These disciplines are employed by end-users to try to integrate and engage with the business as a partner. One of the emerging disciplines includes a middle-out EA approach, which according to Gartner will have a transformational impact on business in the next two to five years.

"The middle-out approach enables the creation of an adaptable architecture that can help manage rapid change and enable innovation by focusing on coordination through interfaces, rather than on control through top-down standards," said Allega.

Gartner found that 73 percent of clients aspired to support "mature enterprise architecture" during the next three to five years, demonstrating that business strategy will be pervasively understood and supported within EA and across business and IT. "We predict that by 2015, the marketplace of EA practitioners will find a landscape very different from today's environment," said Betsy Burton, Research Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner.

"To prepare for 2015, EA practitioners need to ensure that EA practices are driven by a clear business vision and defined business context, and that their EA program has stabilised the practices and disciplines that are less than two years to mainstream adoption."

via mikethearchitect.com

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POIG - Meetup on the Spur of the Moment

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:23:10 +0100

POIG is a great idea thats finally happened. Have you ever wanted to just meetup with someone to grab a cup of coffee and talk about social business? Or maybe you are having a hard time finding enough players for a pickup game of hoops? You might try Poig. The more friends you have the more the site makes sense. Poig is not about RSVPing for a meetup or happening that wont be until next week. Its something thats immediate. The founder Joe Robinson said it was like a reverse Groupon - Im actually not sure what he meant by that - but I can imagine local businesses connecting in and offering deals for spur of the moment get togethers. Using Facebook I joined in about 5 seconds. Take a look at the main page and you can see the things happing right now on Poig. Join the fun at http://Poig.com

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dlvr.it - You Publish. We Deliver

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 03:21:21 +0100

Deliver It! - can take any of your RSS feeds and route them to any number of social sites including Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook. You can filter, schedule and plan what goes out and where it goes. This a well thought out tool that gets your material out into the social grid right away. I can see small business using it to promote their business - by doing quick mini blog articles using Posterous or Tumblr. Catch the wave at http://dlvr.it

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Photofunia - Lives up to its name

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 23:59:56 +0100

Photofunia is another free online photo editing site. What is remarkable is not just the array of effects - but the use of face recognition technology. Photofunia can extract a face from a photo image and then super-impose it into different situations - as putting your mug on a billboard. I had crazy fun just playing with it. I imposed my wife's face onto Lulu the dancing girl. Give it a whirl at http://Photofunia.com

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SmarTweeter - Smart Tweets for Better SEO

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:43:11 +0100

SmarTweeter is a new tool to help small businesses promote themselves on the web. SmartTweeter will create tweets out of every page on your website. You can edit the twitter messages and can schedule the tweets to be sent out automatically - or you can do it manually any time you like. You can optionally use avoo.net to shorten all your urls. All you tweets can be saved as they go out into a Tweets Directory - giving you some extra link juice. SmarTweeter makes social media objects out of all your web pages without having to do anything. In the near future SmartTweeter will place the outgoing tweets on content rich topic pages maintained by SocialPulse.com. This will be a powerful way for a business to promote themselves - on Twitter and also have their webpage links placed on well visited pages. Give it a spin at http://SmarTweeter.com

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