David Knott 13/10/2022 David Knott 13/10/2022

Quantum weirdness, a wall and wonder

This is going to take longer than I thought.

A couple of weeks back, I promised to do some learning in public, delving into a field I didn’t understand and sharing my experiences in this blog. I chose quantum computing. Last week I started by reading popular articles to gauge what an interested layperson could understand by scanning the press: I found some answers, but even more questions.

This week I tried to get serious: to read some books, as well as some detailed articles, summaries and links that some very kind friends and colleagues have sent me.

And, as things got serious, they started to get difficult. I found myself staring at pages of equations that made no sense to me, and terms that I didn’t understand. Have you ever had the experience of reading the same page of a book three times, and realising that nothing is going in? Or highlighting the sections that seem important and that you need to come back to - and then realising that you have highlighted everything? I’m at about that stage in my exploration of quantum computing.

David Knott 06/10/2022 David Knott 06/10/2022

The first layer of the quantum onion

Last week I promised to do some learning in public, to spend at least a few weeks attempting to get to grips with a subject I know little about: quantum computing.

The rules were that in the first week, I would only look at articles from the press, not written by specialists in the field, partly to introduce myself to the subject, but also to get a feel for how much a curious layperson can be expected to understand from such articles. In subsequent weeks, I will go deeper, reading specialist texts and, if possible, getting the advice of experts.

So, to follow my self-imposed rule, I started this week by opening up my browser, typing in ‘quantum computing’, selecting ‘news’, and reading the first half dozen or so articles.

David Knott 29/09/2022 David Knott 29/09/2022

Into the quantum field of ignorance

The visible universe - stars, galaxies, interstellar gas, the Earth, you, me, everything we can directly detect, see and touch - is estimated to make up only 5% of the actual universe. We can deduce the existence of the other 95%, referred to as dark matter and dark energy, by its effects, but we don’t know what it really is.

It sometimes feels that the field of enterprise computing is like this. Any one person can get to grips with some of the topics that make up this huge and ever more complex field, but we will only ever grasp a few percent. Every enterprise computing endeavour has to be a collective effort, with team members plugging the gaps in each other’s ignorance.

David Knott 22/09/2022 David Knott 22/09/2022

I like spaghetti on my plate, not in my code

If you have ever attempted to update or maintain code, you know what spaghetti looks like. Even more, you know what it feels like. You are familiar with that sinking feeling when you realise that, in order to make a change that should be simple, you need to go deeper . . . and deeper . . . and deeper. You know what it means to build a mental map of convoluted code, to put virtual fingers and pins in place to keep track of important pieces of logic - and then for that whole map to vanish when you get distracted or interrupted. You know what it’s like to make a change without full confidence that you understand what you’re doing, and hope that the tests will save you from the most damaging mistakes - only to realise that the tests are even more cryptic than the rest of the code.

Like many things in enterprise technology, though, it’s hard to explain what spaghetti feels like to non-technical people, to make clear the impact it has on reliability, on agility, and on the ability of teams to feel good about their code base.

David Knott 15/09/2022 David Knott 15/09/2022

What if we behaved as if we cared about technology?

There is a puzzle in enterprise technology.

We spend a lot of time building systems and making them work. We make business cases, we gain sponsorship, we plan investments, we organise programmes and projects, and, eventually, sometimes after a large amount of mayhem and drama, we get something into production.

And then, after all that work in building systems, we spend a lot of time and effort getting rid of them. We count up our number of applications, and feel bad if the number is higher than it was last year. We put systems on the list of things to be decommissioned, and feel bad if we fail to decommission them. We call systems ‘legacy’ and ‘heritage’ and other euphemisms for ‘old’ - and recognise that all of these labels denote something that we would rather not have.

David Knott 08/09/2022 David Knott 08/09/2022

Danger zones on the way to cloud: the Mists of Confusion, the Mountains of No, and the Swamps of Error

‘We’ve tried this before. It didn’t work then. What makes this time different?’

Are there any more dispiriting words to hear when you’re leading transformation? If you’ve been in that job, the scene is familiar. You have built the business case. You have secured the investment for the programme. You have found your partners. You have prepared your slides and you have organised the launch meeting. You are ready to inspire, organise and motivate. You have delivered your pitch and you have opened the floor for questions.

The first hand that goes up is from a veteran member of the team. They have lived through many changes. They know the systems inside out. Their support is vital: other people will follow their lead. And then they ask that dreaded question.

David Knott 01/09/2022 David Knott 01/09/2022

Thinking differently about . . . machine learning

Have you ever been introduced to someone then, five minutes into the conversation, realised that you can’t remember their name? If you have never had this experience, then you have a better memory than mine. Whenever that happens, it feels as if you have a window of acceptable ignorance - a period during which it’s embarrassing but not disastrous to admit your lapse of memory. But, as time goes on, you can feel that window expiring: it becomes more and more awkward to ask the person’s name.

It can feel like this in enterprise technology too: we hear about new technologies, trends and terms every day, and there’s a period during which it seems fine to admit that you don’t understand, and to ask people to explain. But then the new concepts are everywhere, and everybody seems to using them with confidence. How did you get left out? Is it okay to say ‘I don’t understand’ now, or is it too late?

I have to admit that I felt like this for a while with the concept of machine learning.

David Knott 01/09/2022 David Knott 01/09/2022

There’s plenty of room on the cloud: enough room to make mistakes?

We all make mistakes, especially when we are building and running enterprise technology.

Sometimes mistakes happen because we simply get something wrong (remember that time that you ran the script to delete test data, forgetting you were working on the production system?).

Sometimes mistakes happen because we haven’t got enough information to be right (remember that package you bought just before the vendor was acquired and the product discontinued?).

Sometime mistakes happen because we haven’t acquired enough experience to know how to avoid them (remember when you kept applying the old security policies to the new environment before realizing that they weren’t needed any more?).

David Knott 25/08/2022 David Knott 25/08/2022

Going to the cloud? Make sure you’ve packed enough leadership and thought

Surely by now we must know how to enact transformation within large organisations. We obtain loads of funding, appoint the programme director, set up the PMO, build the programme plan, set up governance and so on and so on.

If, like me, you have lived through many such large transformation programmes, your heart may sink at thought of all of the paraphernalia of change. All those things are important (it’s hard to organise lots of people to do complicated things, and hard to get them to stay organised), but they are necessary rather than sufficient. Have you ever attempted a transformation programme where you set up all the necessary mechanics, and yet the programme failed to fire? The processes were there, but the momentum required to sustain true change was never achieved?

David Knott 18/08/2022 David Knott 18/08/2022

How do I get there from here? Two first rungs on the ladder to cloud?

If only we hadn’t called it ‘cloud’. I sometimes wish that the technology industry had come up with a better term for the global, hyperscale, software defined platforms that I believe will form the dominant computing infrastructure of tomorrow. ‘Cloud’ implies something nebulous, light and airy, something that is impossible to touch or pin down. In real life, the physical implementation of cloud is a long way from this image: it is made of servers, storage arrays, network equipment, cables and physical facilities. The cloud is something you can weigh.

However, there is one way in which the term ‘cloud’ is useful. When we think of a cloud we think of something which is way up in the sky, something that is difficult to reach for mere earthbound mortals. The reason that I think that this image is useful is that it represents something true about cloud: that answering the question, ‘how do I get there from here?’ is difficult. To reach a real cloud, you would need a very long ladder and you would have nothing to lean it against. Getting to the computing cloud from your on premise starting point can seem like just as much of an acrobatic balancing act.

David Knott 11/08/2022 David Knott 11/08/2022

Not just someone else’s computer: to understand cloud, go back to the start

Do you believe that the cloud is just somebody else’s computer? If so, then I have to disagree with you.

I could say that this is because a computer is just a machine, whereas a cloud is a fully architected, software defined, API managed platform, that is at least as much software as it is hardware. However, I think that we can find a more interesting answer by going back to the origins of cloud.

Most on-premise computing architectures have grown organically over decades, and include principles, patterns, components and capabilities from other eras. The code running on that mainframe at the heart of your estate may have been written before it was normal for systems to run across large numbers of machines in parallel. The processes to procure, configure and manage servers may have been created before we realized that dev and ops belong together as a shared set of accountabilities. The security measures that protect your assets may have been implemented before it was the standard to connect most of your systems to a global public network.

David Knott 04/08/2022 David Knott 04/08/2022

Through the innovation window

Last week I had the chance to look through a historical pane of glass.

I was visiting Lacock Abbey, the place where Henry Fox Talbot took the first ever photographic negative image in 1835, of a window with latticed leading.

It was a strange feeling, looking through the window which had produced such a significant image. I spent a few moments in reflection, imagining what Fox Talbot must have felt when he first realized that his experiment had worked. Then I took a picture on my phone.

I believe that this historical moment reinforces three important lessons for technologists and innovators today.