How to develop software

In earlier posts (such as here), I have discussed different approaches to software development and one of the key models for this is the HoliDev model where we combine requirements driven development, outcome-driven development (e.g. A/B testing) and AI-driven development. In the figure below, the HoliDev model is shown graphically. It may easily seem that … Read more

AI is not about data sets

As I’m spending an increasing amount of time in the AI field with a variety of companies, I’ve noticed an interesting misconception in the ML/DL space. Many have a tendency to focus on data sets, experimenting with different models using a specific set of data and, finally, deploying a model in a specific context. This … Read more

Quantify yourself

Having spent quite a bit of this summer thinking about machine learning and artificial intelligence, it seems to me that there’s a very important transformation ongoing from a focus on the qualitative to a focus on the quantitative. The moment we start with A/B testing, deploying multi-armed bandits or training machine learning models, the very … Read more

AI: the fabric of computing

During the summer, I spent a week at a summer school on deep learning (DL). There were several reasons to attend, but one was to simply learn more about this trending topic. In many ways, it was a wonderful, though humbling, experience as the field is progressing at a rate that’s simply phenomenal. There are … Read more

Is Your Work Meaningful?

As we’re entering the vacation season, many of us are going to take a step back and reflect on where we are in our professional lives. To what extent is our work aligned with our personal goals, norms and values? Does it help us grow and develop as professionals and as individuals? Is the direction … Read more

Business Starts With Engineers

On a regular basis, I run into engineers who refuse to talk about business, monetization, customer value and related topics. All they want is to get a requirement specification, put on their headphones and start building. Their perspective is that business is the responsibility of others and that their job is to build what they’re … Read more

Focus On What You Can Control

Over the years (decades by now) that I’ve worked in industry and academia, I noticed a common pattern in organizations that don’t perform well or that have great difficulty delivering on expectations: a culture has taken hold that explains phenomena in and around the organization in terms of factors that are not under the control … Read more

The Illusion of Alignment

As I work with teams in dozens of companies, I’ve noticed an interesting pattern over the years. When I start to work with the team and we go through introductions and the preliminaries, everything looks peachy and wonderful. As we get into the work at hand and I (innocently) start to ask questions, a certain … Read more

The End of Process

With the constantly increasing connectivity and data collection in everything from websites to the Internet of Things, collecting accurate measurements about user and system behavior in the field is becoming increasingly feasible and easy. This is causing a shift in the way we develop and evolve systems, away from requirements and instead focusing on the … Read more

Why Your Corporate Culture Is Wrong

One of the human traits that I tend to forget about (and I believe many with me) is that we ignore well over 99 percent of all the information that our senses receive. If you don’t believe me, take the selective attention test as a case in point. In many ways, focusing our mental energy … Read more