Author: karljeffery

Software programmers and developers come in a variety of different types, and it would be silly to try to generalise. But can we just say, people involved in making something nearly invariably have a different perspective on that thing as the person who uses it as a tool in their work. The simpler the thing,…

Supercleverpeople look after their own interests, and don’t mind making life harder for nonsuperclever people. Clever people have: Built legal and immigration systems where you win or succeed if you understand clever rules or can afford to pay someone who does Built employment systems which end up paying salaries to supercleverpeople and leave the rest…

I read that the UK’s Money and Mental Health Policy Institute has published a report showing how people with low mental health struggle to work with banks and manage finances. This can include difficulty remembering passwords, problems constraining spending, anxiety, problems making decisions, difficulty dealing with human bank telephone help staff. They could add difficulty…

For years we’ve had minicab companies in London which would arrive after a telephone call and take you anywhere, for an extremely competitive rate. Sometimes the rates are so cheap the driver could hardly be making minimum wage – £20 for a taxi ride which could take 40 minutes, and the driver has to go…

For an example of non human centric automation, tere’s an example from my experience coming from York with 3 young children, with Virgin Trains last Sunday. We had reserved seats – but were told when we got to York station that the train had “no seat reservations”. There had been some computer failure at the…

  One  of the customers of our small business is moving their supply chain to SAP. Not very interesting is it? They’ve sent me a long letter explaining it. I had to read it. The letter explains why they are moving to SAP, they hope my business will benefit from their SAP, they are aligning…

So many software discussions seem to resolve to one question – who is ultimately defining and driving the software – the customer or the software company? Almost always, its the software company. The software come up with something they want to sell, and a business model around it, and they go and sell it. When…

I was asked to submit my home electricity and gas meter readings this morning. I clicked on a link on an e-mail which took me to a mobile web page of the meter provider which .. asked me to enter a username and password. Why is this still OK? I’ve clicked on a link in…

The conventional software model, provided by big companies, does not put any premium on flexibility. The customer should know what they want in advance, we build it, and it is much more expensive for us to keep changing it. When flexibility is expensive, then everyone benefits from keeping everything standardised – the Model T Ford…

Most industries struggle with data management – certainly the ones which we look at in detail do (shipping and oil and gas). Data management is a problem for the organisation but not usually anyone’s individual problem, because leaving data in a mess today causes problems for the unknown person who has to make sense of…