Turns out my personality type is "Rational"

keirsey.com - Rational

In fact an Architect (INTP) to be precise. Apparently people of this type excel at being able to classify and think abstractly about the real world. David Keirsey's model therefore directly appeals to me as a method of interacting and understanding the people around me. Actually in his book David Keirsey admits to being a Rational thinker, so perhaps this is why his style appeals to me.

This is proving to be a useful 'in' for me in terms of improving my emotional intelligence - something I think is important for my role but doesn't come naturally to me.

Perhaps other 'architect's out there may find it of use too.

Sometimes you just need a decision

Sometimes all that is needed to proceed is a decision. It's best if it is the optimal decision, but it doesn't have to be - it just needs to be good enough and have everyone signed up to it. A lack of a decision leads to argument, confusion and wasted effort.

Sometimes you just need a decision, so my advice is to go ahead and do it.

Digital pens aid efficiency?

A recent article* in the BCS magazine on the NHS use of digital pen technology proving more useful/cost effective than laptops or tablet PC's led me to wonder whether this would be useful for me - would auto digitising my notes improve my personal efficiency?

There seem to be two types:
1. A pen that requires special paper to be able to capture notes
2. A pen with a separate sensor that captures the pens movements over normal paper

An example of the first type is the livescribe pen - this actually records the audio as you write as well and is very well featured. It does require livescribe notepaper to work which has it's pro's and cons. You can print this yourself. There are other solutions like anoto that work on special paper - actually with anoto this comes with software that can add the digital marks required to pages you print from your local printer so you can print PDF forms and the software can generate the PDF with your notes on it when you sync the pen (I believe this is the solution the nhs are looking at).

A good example of the second type is the Dane-Elec Zpen which needs you to clip a small USB device to the page before you write. You can write on any paper and then sync the drawings on to your computer.

So there is technology out there that is well established and mature, it works although has a number of constraints - can I use it? There are security concerns about the data that might reside on the pen - I'm assuming one can't encrypt the data in the same way one can on a tablet pc or laptop. With voice recording folks may find it disconcerting or indeed it may stop meetings in some cases.

Interesting problems that deserve more research on my part.

From a solution point of view it does look like a great technology for areas where tablets, laptops and pc's are not viable data capture devices and you don't want to increase your scanning base.

http://www.anoto.com/your-personal-digital-whiteboard.aspx
http://www.livescribe.com/
http://www.danedigital.com/6-Zpen/

* Can't get a link to the original article but here are some others

How to have more self-discipline | Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

Some interesting observations that apply equally to the busy software architect...

How to have more self-discipline | Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

Perhaps this says as much about my view of humanity as humanity itself - I rather suspect that as long as the new OS supports gaming, communication and commerce well, and also supports p0rn in some way then it will do very well.

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

The value of learning

One key intangible benefit that may be learnt from the agile approach to fail early / fail often is that of learning. By this I mean the project team learns how to operate but also the business learns what the change could mean and how their requirements could be realised.

It's possible to articulate this as a tangible benefit in terms of cost avoidance but this is difficult to articulate. The cost avoided from re-implementing around an error or the value of implementing a right solution is hard to calculate.

The real value of learning should not be underestimated however.

Articulating options

When presenting a number of different solutions to a given problem there are two key elements:
1. What are the key points that describe each option and
2. What differentiates each option.

It is key in a paper discussing architecutral options that both are considered to allow the relevant group to make a decision.