Of seamless, seams, Conway and APIs.
Many enterprise software vendors promise seamless integration. This strikes me as both impossible and undesirable. The term is meaningless at best. Rather than wishing the seams between products away, we need to learn from cricket, and embrace the seam, it would be...
Reflections from the Unit4 sales kickoff.
In my career I have attended a variety of sales kick offs, as an employee and as an external speaker. They generally involve sales leaders telling sales people that they are awesome. There is lots of talk of crushing the competition while simultaneously showing deep...
Documentation and Safety.
Safety image (via flashbak) I recently read the latest book by Gene Kim, the Unicorn Project. Essential reading for anyone involved in building software. It should be on Netflix, with Claire Danes from Homeland in the lead role. In the book Gene mentions the Alcoa...
The Future of Work Index by Acadian Ventures.
I see lots of theories about what the HRTECH market is worth. The numbers range dramatically, depending on who is calculating them. When I worked at Gartner, I admired the work Chris Pang and Fabrizio Biscotti did to figure out the value of the software markets. While...
Have you got skills? Cornerstone acquires Clustree. Some thoughts.
Cornerstone acquires Clustree. This was announced today. One of my first customers at Otter Advisory was Clustree. I have been impressed with their deep technical understanding of ML/AI , and the pioneering work they do to gather, collate, classify and manage a vast...
A book review: Trailblazer. Marc Benioff and Monica Langley.
I read all sorts of books, but I'm generally not a fan of CEO books. They are usually ghost written hagiographies, brimming with platitudes, false humility, fortune cookie advice and big oily dollops of product placement. A friend and former colleague recently joined...
Please welcome Michaela Schilling to Otter Advisory.
When I first joined SuccessFactors, Adam Kovalevsky kindly introduced me to his Executive Assistant. I'm thankful to Adam for many things, but enabling Michaela to work with me is top of the list. During my time at SuccessFactors, Michaela made me a better manager and...
Test data discipline. A Wakanda moment.
I probably sound like a broken record on this, but don't use characters from movies or famous people's images in your test or demo system (actually don't use any images that you don't have rights to). You typically don't have permission to do, and the last you want is...
Pizza and how it will change the software industry for the better
This post has nothing to do with the dietary requirements of software engineers. This week the US Supreme Court made a decision to deny the petition from Domino's pizza to hear whether its website is required to be accessible. This means that the lower court decision...
Out of stealth mode (Utmost). And a trip to Orlando.
Since I started Otter Advisory late last year, I've worked with a variety of HRTECH vendors, and I have been transparent about whom I'm working with. I outline things here. The main exceptions have been with M&A work, and with one start-up that was in stealth...