“The subway rider should be given only information at the point of decision,” proclaimed the designers. “Never before. Never after.” Back in 1970, Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda were commissioned to design a set of guidelines, the Graphics Standards Manual, to help people navigate New York’s mass transit system, and the result was a stunningly precise […]
Design guidelines? Who needs them?! Read More »
This article originally appeared on reed.co.uk’s news site I was recently asked by Clare McDonald (@ClareEllenMcD), at Computer Weekly if I could help with some opinions and figures about recruiting for technology roles, especially in the light of the upcoming A Level results in the UK. As seems to always happen if I’m given the chance
Do I need a Computer Science degree to work in technology? Read More »
A quick visualization of the gender bias in certain subjects, as found in the 2013 UCAS admissions data which I dug out for my previous post. Computer Science (87% male), Engineering (87% male) and Technologies (85% male) show a woeful imbalance. Education (86% female) and subjects allied to Medicine (81% female) show an almost equivalent
Gender bias in UK university applications Read More »
This article originally appeared in a shorter form in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s ‘Impact of Cloud‘ report in 2014 The legacy of company structure If you and I were to list the departments which form our businesses we would probably find much in common. Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR and IT would almost certainly be on
It’s time for IT to retire Read More »
From the book Born to Run, I remember a quote from Caballo Blanco: “Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got
Easy, Light, Smooth then Fast Read More »
I’m quite often asked why we chose a cloud-first philosophy for reed.co.uk’s enterprise systems like mail and CRM. For me, the approach to embracing ‘the cloud’ is an acceptance that most business challenges can be addressed with the attitude, “Someone can probably do this better than I can”. The cloud harnesses the simple truth that some
Why on earth would you build on a cloud? Read More »
In my weekly stand-up with reed.co.uk‘s wonderful Scrum Masters, Matt and Dave, we were discussing our plans for an Agile event later in the summer. It’s important to us as a business to stay in touch with the processes, success and learnings of other businesses, which we do through company visits and events like Lean
Zen Agile? How Buddhism and Scrum align Read More »