Knowledge Silos Hinder Software Developers

According to Stack Overflow's 2022 Developer Survey, 2/3 of developers run up against "knowledge silos" that slow them down.  When needed data is stored in other, inaccessible systems, it compromises the effectiveness of your organization.

© 2022 Praveen Puri

The Great Resignation Also Affects Institutional Knowledge

Especially at tech companies, when workers quit, you not only have a loss of expertise, but you also suffer a loss of institutional knowledge.

What's the difference? If you lose a python developer, for example, you've lost the expertise of python development (which you can recover by hiring a new developer). But, if that developer knew the quirks of the accounting software that your company sells, and can quickly resolve bugs, then that is institutional knowledge that will take time and experience for someone to learn.

To guard against this, you need to encourage employees to document their knowledge of your applications and work processes.  The worst way to do this is through requiring them to create complex, formal documents.  Your workers are already busy, and this will get put off.

The best way is to encourage them to informally record what they learned as they solve issues. Blogs and wikis are ideal formats.

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Tech Investments Wasted by poor/slow end-user adoption

According to an article in CIODive (https://www.ciodive.com/news/investments-attrition-tech-end-user/629538/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202022-08-12%20CIO%20Dive%20%5Bissue:43785%5D&utm_term=CIO%20Dive),

60% of IT leaders feel that Digital project ROIs are threatened because end-users aren't adopting new tech quickly enough.

This is why my Strategic Simplicity® framework, with its 4 components (change simplicity, market simplicity, decision simplicity, user simplicity), is so important.  

Change can't be "dumped" onto end-users.  Their needs have to be incoporated in new products.  Tech needs to serve the business. Users should not have to adopt sub-optimal processes to adjust to technology.

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Do low / no code tools mean the the demise of developers?

No. I think that low / no code tools will mostly be used at the front-end, by power end-users, for tasks such as creating custom reports and configuring menus.  The applications and back-end infrastructure will still depend on modern programming languages and experienced developers, because low/no code tools will not be fast enough and robust enough to scale and handle security.

© 2022 Praveen Puri

$1000 Photo By Any Other Name...

Today's Wall Street Journal had an article about how some professionals pay $1,000+ for professional headshots for bios and linkedIn.

It quoted one photographer who charges $1500: "I'm not a photographer per se. I consider myself a facial-conveyance strategist."

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Book Marketing Lessons from TikTok #BookTok

According to the NY Times, TikTok 's #BookTok has become a driving force for bestsellers, especially in the adult fiction category.

Here's the interesting part of the article:

"The most popular videos don’t generally offer information about the book’s author, the writing or even the plot, the way a traditional review does. Instead, readers speak plainly about the emotional journey a book will offer."

I think this is one of the key, general principles for marketing in today's Attention Scarcity Age.  It transcends the specificity of books and TikTok, and can be applied to any product/service, or platform.

People are overwhelmed and don't need more facts or information.  They want an emotional connection, and want to know the payoff from the book. 

Bias in AI?

AI itself isn't biased, since it doesn't really have consciousness and judgement. It just uses data. 

It goes without saying that we need to avoid feeding it biased data but, even accurate data can lead to conclusions we don't want. For example, if there aren't a lot of minority or women candidates in a certain tech field, the AI might conclude that it's an undesirable trait.

To counter that, we might actually have to add bias into the system. For example, pre-add weight for underrepresented groups in tech. I guess, sort of how bookmakers set odds so that all bets don't just go to the favored sports team.

© 2022 Praveen Puri