Is all this Health Tech just another fad?

Technology currently has it's big laser pointed at the health sector. The major players like Apple, Google and Microsoft (I’m sure they will turn up to the party at some point) are all rapidly producing devices and web services in the health space, keen to capitalise on the growing desire of people suffering the excesses of modern life to use technology to get them fitter and better looking.

While this is all great and I'm sure it is going to be the next Big Thing, I can't help feel a pang of cynicism around Health-Tech.

Here is why:

Eight reasons never to hire a Unicorn

If you work in the Digital Advertising industry you most likely have come across the term 'Unicorn'. If you don't or haven't, here is a short background.

Unicorns are mythical creatures which have a large, spirally, pointy horn mounted to their forehead. Popular culture - predominantly little girls and pagans - have long since had a fascination with these creatures who are purported to have special healing powers and are symbols of grace and beauty.

Legend also suggests that only virgins can catch unicorns which, in this age of sin, perhaps explains why sightings are very scarce.

In short, Unicorns are rare, special creatures that are difficult to catch.

Drawing back to the Digital Advertising Industry which sometimes thrives on mythology, legend and magic, the notion of 'Unicorn' has been adopted into its lingo as a rare and special person who simply must be snared and put immediately to work dreaming up the next wearable tech idea to promote mouthwash and, in the process, make the world a better place.

The Devil of Distributed Development

There is gold in them thar hills!

Over the last six months, I have been working on a model for distributed, Agile Scrum development. This has been in response to on-going issues on software projects where development (front end, back-end and testing) is done in an offshore office. The issues have been around areas such as relationships, quality, communication, profitability and client satisfaction.

In addition to these common trouble hotspots, I work in a creative led Digital Agency which, due to the nature of the beast, presents even more challenges around establishing dedicated teams with the right skill-sets, consistent delivery methodologies, adhering to best practices and educating internal and external stakeholders into rationale behind them.  The last point around education is probably the biggest overarching challenge since if everyone knew what the right thing was to do, they would do it.

The best example of an education challenge is explaining the tax of distributed development. From a financial person's perspective distributed development is a no brainer.

"What? You mean one expensive onshore developer can fund almost five cheap offshore developers. These margins are massive! Well get on the phone to any country with a slightly f*cked economy and round up developers. Ideally it should be a country that has been oppressed by a communist regime guaranteeing optimal economic exploitation combined with a decent level of education. Yeehaaa! There is gold in them thar hills!" said fictitious Financial Person.

Angry Customer Twitter Campaign #Fail

Have you seen @lostbag

There comes a time in every customer's life when they are served injustice. This dish comes from all industries and in all forms and leaves its victims with raised blood pressure and the acidic burn of righteous indignation.  I recently was a victim and the perpetrator was Lufthansa Airlines WHO LOST MY BAG AND STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN ME MONEY BACK FOR IT!!!!!

(Breathe)

So, I went on a business trip and Lufthansa lost my bag on the return leg. After a painful journey back home and trying to get into my house (my bag had my keys and my wife was away) I began the process of trying to get my bag back. After a few weeks of unsuccessful bag finding I realised that I was in a Kafka'esque world of bizarre bureaucracy where no one knew anything and nothing made sense.

Living in the 21st Century with social networking and Apps, I realised I could challenge the status quo. I was an empowered consumer! Their inefficient call centres and surly staff could do nothing to stop what was to become the greatest social media campaign the airline industry had witnessed since that guy made a song about an airline which broke his guitar and went, like, totally viral on YouTube.

119 tweets and about two months later I had 10 followers. Sadly, my @LufthansaBad campaign never went viral and MY BAG IS STILL LOST AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN ME MONEY BACK FOR IT!!!!!

Digital Trends in 2013

Every year, around this time, there are a lot predictions on what the digital trends for the next year will be. They are often produced by Marketeers and therefore have pithy names which are a clever amalgamation of two words which never before have co-existed. In a lot of cases, that is for a very good reason. Some examples from 2012 include: "Idlesourcing", "Eco-cycology", "Flawsome", "Recommerce", "More-ism" sourced from here. ...

This year I decided Tech-Rash needed its own list so I tried to come up with my own trends backed by catchy names. I attacked the problem by coming up with a catchy name first and then thinking how/if it could become a trend. I came up a few but then decided to cast the net out and 'crowd-source' the rest of the content for this post. I got back a range of responses ranging from silly (like mine) to silly, but could catch on, to serious. Thanks to @davidknipeTA, @michael_hook, @jgbibby, @cs_andrews and @ev2000  for their contributions.

As an aside, the idea of silly things turning into something serious and useful has already been coined by Seth Godin (Marketeer Extraordinaire) in his article Ridiculous is the new Remarkable.

Effective Resource Management in Web Application Development

Mmmm. Chocolate.

My wife and I recently found ourselves in a frustrating predicament. Over a year ago we made a decision that we needed to move house and therefore needed to save money so we could afford a deposit. We started our saving initiative my way. I created an elaborate spreadsheet which listed our outgoings in meticulous detail. Well, the outgoings that I knew about like bills and mortgage payments. I then added in lines on our living expenses and luxuries. I was very generous about how much we needed to live and how much we could splash out on for fun. I crunched some numbers and the end result looked pretty good. We could save a tidy sum every month and be living in a new house before you could say ‘white picket fence’.

Social networks: If you build it, will they come?

Don't do what Costner did or you will fail.

Social is pretty big now, right? If you ask me what main things the next generation have which I didn't have growing up, I'd say Facebook, Twitter and Apps. It's no surprise then that businesses are desperate to get involved and use social networking to boost their profile and their profits. And while they're at it they will create a couple of apps too.

There are many different strategies to leverage social media. Some companies try to use what's already there. They will litter their web site with Social calls to action. Do you 'Like' this page about the latest innovation in washing powder? Of course I do! Which person of sound mind wouldn’t? Would you like to tweet and then re-tweet this great deal on life insurance? Did you have to ask? #Death is trending right now.

What defines a successful project?

Single Fist Pump!

A colleague asked me over coffee, “What do you do?” I sipped my full fat cappuccino and reflected on the question. Sipping coffee and reflecting go well together so I may have milked the situation a bit more than was required. 

“Hello!” he interrupted. “Did you hear me?”

It was a good question erring on the side of existential and difficult to sum up in a tweet sized thought bite. 

For a bit of context, I have a technical leadership role which can mean many things to many people - including other people in technical leadership roles. I had to dig deep and try find an answer that came from my heart and wasn’t ripped off from the Steve Jobs Autobiography. 

“To make sure we deliver projects... successfully.” I said with the thousand yard stare of a visionary. 

“To deliver projects?” he smirked. “Truly inspirational.”

Out of the Search Darkness

"A harrowing tale of one man facing his search daemons"  Sergey Brin

9 out of 10 technical projects which fail is because of badly thought out and executed search. Okay, that number is a piece of fiction; but, my hopefully empathetic friend, that is how I feel; because yet again I am fighting the same old user experience battles when it comes to designing search.

I think the root cause of search atrocities is, like most heinous and tyrannical acts, due to ignorance combined with wild ambition. Let's stuff everything cool we've ever seen on any site that I've ever dun a search on and then it should be wickid, yeah? No. What about fuzzy.. No. What about nice mix of facetted did you means? No. What abou... No. No. No.

Now, before I cast myself in a dubious light of technological pessimism and creativity bashing egotism, let me take you down the river on a journey of exploration and discovery into tech rash's top dos and donts when designing and building search.

Why vendor favouritism is a good thing

As a technology solutions provider I often come across clients who are against vendor favouritism - especially when it comes to Content Management Systems. In this camp, technology favouritism is seen as being biased at the expense of customers' commercial and operational needs.My view is that when it comes to building and delivering complex technology projects, vendor favouritism is essential.

And, dear potential customer, this is why:

Cherish the Small Stuff

Confucius say:

 You can stand with your back to the sea and shoot fish in a barrel, but you ignoring the giant shark which eat people and boats.

Okay, Confucius wasn't around at the time when Jaws graced the big screen. But if he was and he worked on technology projects then he would have said something like that. Probably.

What this pearl of wisdom means in real terms is this. If you are working on a big project and you need to reduce timescales, axing the simple stuff is not only ineffectual but will ultimately be to the detriment of whatever you produce.

Back to the Estimate

The life of a technical architect is one filled with magic and wonder. We often wonder how to perform expected feats of magic. Forgiving such poor word play, there is one duty we are faced with in our day to day that demands such a skill. This is The Estimate. Being asked to estimate for a project can be like magically predicting the future. Often with a lack of information, people to consult and pressure from the business to come up with the magic number that turns a profit and doesn't send the client packing, it is easy to get it very wrong. Like Marty McFly in Back To the Future II, how do you avoid a dystopian future where you've been fired, your music career is wasted and your wife’s turned out to be a bit of a bloater? Since you probably don't have a flux capacitor, your next best option is to abide by Tech Rash’s top tips for project estimation.

A Rough Guide: Software Specification

Software Development can be like going on a holiday to somewhere new. You always run the risk of getting very little sun, potentially ending up in a grotty hotel or getting messed up by muggers and left groaning and penniless in a filthy, urine saturated alleyway. So how do we avoid this scenario and make this holiday the one where we meet up with our new found holiday friends, knock back a few nostalgic caipirinhas and congratulate each other on what a brilliant time we all had?

The Yellow Brick Build: A project methodology

Thunder! Thunder! Thund! Thu.n.de.? 

In the world of project management methodologies there is a limited set of models we as a delivery team are asked to subscribe to. And once we do, often is the case where the project becomes a never ending battle between the theory and the reality. The best proposition for describing projects came from my old boss.

To quote:

"F*ck 'agile' and 'waterfall' - the new labels for project management are as follows: 'car crash' (small projects), 'train wreck' (medium sized projects), and 'airplane disaster' (large-scale projects)"