I was out for the count last week following some cold/flu type symptoms, hence no weeknotes. I was convinced it was covid but lateral flow said no. I’m relieved to be feeling much better this week.
If you can thank people AND highlight what they did that was particularly good or helpful, I think that always carries a bit more weight. I always appreciate this type of feedback because I’m often blind to the stuff that comes naturally to me.
Just regularly saying ‘thank you’ is a easy minimum standard to adopt.
You probably don’t need Generative AI for transactional processes. Good old fashioned ‘dumb’ automation is absolutely fine. I wonder how many transactional processes are being identified a complicated, and therefore amenable to Generative AI, when really it might be a lack of focus/effort to simplify or refine? Probably also not super helpful that Generative AI is being marketed as the tool that makes anything/everything better by default. That’s unlikely to be true in practice, but I think this will shake itself out in the course of time.
I’ve been doing a bit of a tour of various housing management system products over the past couple of weeks. It’s been interesting to see the different approaches applied by different suppliers, particually with regards to how ‘fully formed’ the base product is and what that implies about the effort to implement it. In my head I’ve been thinking about different 2×2 grids to compare them. See example below based on cost vs customisation (this is imperfect, just for illustrative purposes). I’m wondering if something like this is useful to stress test our strategic direction against the products that we might choose. Eg. Are you looking to standardise as much as possible? Or are you looking to build in order to respond to requirements that are not well met in the current marketplace of products? I think Wardley mapping would also work well here, although prehaps lack the immediacy and familiarity of the good ‘ol 2×2 grid.
