Enterprise da Vincis
Developing technology for the enterprise involves broader skills than ever before. Like da Vinci, developers need to have an appreciation of, and often a proficiency in, many areas of endeavor. Leonardo was a painter, a writer, a musician, an inventor as well as an architect and engineer – likewise, enterprise developers need to appreciate the user experience, the power and creative forces behind truly great content, the business forces that enable (or kill) the realization of inspired ideas, as well as the technology that sits at the center of their universe. Today, however, all technologists need to aspire to be da Vincis – we can’t get by with only one.
Building for the Enterprise
I’m making revisions to the enterprise development course that I teach at Harvard, trying to adjust the balance between strategic and tactical. Success in enterprise technology these days has much more to do with understanding the context and making good strategic decisions, and less to do with specific tools and languages. Introducing learning objectives related to these strategic skills is challenging, but potentially very rewarding.
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: Harvard enterprise development technology
Community Publishing
I keep returning to this concept whenever I consider certain writing projects related to technology. So many technology areas are very fluid these days, to the extent that traditional publishing models don’t really work well. A well-crafted social environment with the right rewards could generate a living publication, something between a wiki and a traditional text. Worth pursuing…
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: writing technology social publishing open source
New book ideas
I’ve been getting the itch to write a new one. A few topics have developed in my head, a few have been thrust upon me. A sampling:
- Enterprise development in Java: JavaEE 6 plus the surrounding ecosystem, peppered with best practices and lessons learned from the industry. Not a trivial effort, to be sure.
- Distributed agile development.
- Framework encyclopedia. What’s best for what context.
Is there a book you’d like to see written?
New site launched today
After doing cutting edge tech for everyone else, I finally decided to apply a little to my own world. My old site had HTML code in it from 1996. Interesting from a trivia standpoint, but not great to look at.