Monday, May 12, 2025

Maybe you should hire the "rules" people



A lot of great outcomes are directly from emergent innovation
  • Emergent meaning the properties were not predictable from analyzing the constituents; they surprise us all when the integrated constituents all came together and something new appears!
  • Innovation meaning that risks to norms were deliberately taken; a form of destruction-construction
But not everybody is comfortable for destruction-construction; and indeed, there are many industries where the rules and regulations prohibit departure from the norms.

And so if you are managing a rules-based rules-driven project, what's the profile of the staff you need?
The question begs the answer: people who have been successful obtaining quality outcomes while still following the rules ... staying between the hedges, as it were.

So, who are 'they' that can get it done within the rules?
Look here first for the "rules" people:
  • Former military and police
  • Former government agencies staff
  • Former very large corporate leaders
  • Former staff from major 'safety' projects (where the stakes were life-threatening)
  • People who value discipline, even if not one of the 'formers'
  • Athletes from team sports, particularly if not the star of the team
  • Socially moderate, and so likely to fit well into a heterogeneous team
Now, of course, there are a lot of 'formers' from rules-based organizations that are 'former' because they can't follow the rules. It's likely they have been invited to leave and apply their spirits elsewhere. Your job is to filter these rules-misfits out of your hiring plan.

Rules don't necessarily quash innovation
Rules generally go to methods and limits. Rarely do you find a rule about an outcome.
So, within the allowable methods, and within the allowable limits of disturbance, sustainability, availability, and quality in the large sense, any innovative outcome is possible.

You just need to hire the 'rules people' to get there!


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  • Emergent meaning the properties were not predictable from analyzing the constituents; they surprise us all when the integrated constituents all came together and something new appears!
  • Innovation meaning that risks to norms were deliberately taken; a form of destruction-construction
But not everybody is comfortable for destruction-construction; and indeed, there are many industries where the rules and regulations prohibit departure from the norms.

And so if you are managing a rules-based rules-driven project, what's the profile of the staff you need?
The question begs the answer: people who have been successful obtaining quality outcomes while still following the rules ... staying between the hedges, as it were.

So, who are 'they' that can get it done within the rules?
Look here first for the "rules" people:
  • Former military and police
  • Former government agencies staff
  • Former very large corporate leaders
  • Former staff from major 'safety' projects (where the stakes were life-threatening)
  • People who value discipline, even if not one of the 'formers'
  • Athletes from team sports, particularly if not the star of the team
  • Socially moderate, and so likely to fit well into a heterogeneous team
Now, of course, there are a lot of 'formers' from rules-based organizations that are 'former' because they can't follow the rules. It's likely they have been invited to leave and apply their spirits elsewhere. Your job is to filter these rules-misfits out of your hiring plan.

Rules don't necessarily quash innovation
Rules generally go to methods and limits. Rarely do you find a rule about an outcome.
So, within the allowable methods, and within the allowable limits of disturbance, sustainability, availability, and quality in the large sense, any innovative outcome is possible.

You just need to hire the 'rules people' to get there!


Friday, May 9, 2025

Consensus on AI standards


It's a good thing for projects and PM when standard consensus emerges. Risk is lower; competitive compatible products are more available; standard API's become rote.

So it is that in May of 2025 Microsoft and Google come together on a standard for AI agents, or AI-to-AI.
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it would bring support for Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) spec to two of its AI development platforms, Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Microsoft has also joined the A2A working group on GitHub to contribute to the protocol and tooling.


“By supporting A2A and building on our open orchestration platform, we’re laying the foundation for the next generation of software — collaborative, observable, and adaptive by design,” wrote the company in a blog post. “The best agents won’t live in one app or cloud; they’ll operate in the flow of work, spanning models, domains, and ecosystems.”

Need more detail? Click above on the TechCrunch to get the latest.



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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Interview Avatar, or real?



Doing a bit of project hiring by remote interview?
Some caution advised!
You may be talking with an avatar ....

Kyle Barr has a report on gismodo.com with this headline:
FBI Says People Are Using Deepfakes to Apply to Remote Jobs

So, what is Barr reporting that the FBI is saying?

According to the FBI’s announcement, more companies have been reporting people applying to jobs using video, images, or recordings that are manipulated to look and sound like somebody else.

These fakers are also using personal identifiable information from other people—stolen identities—to apply to jobs at IT, programming, database, and software firms.

The report noted that many of these open positions had access to sensitive customer or employee data, as well as financial and proprietary company info, implying the imposters could have a desire to steal sensitive information as well as a bent to cash a fraudulent paycheck.

These applicants were apparently using voice spoofing techniques during online interviews where lip movement did not match what’s being said during video calls, according to the announcement. Apparently, the jig was up in some of these cases when the interviewee coughed or sneezed, which wasn’t picked up by the video spoofing software.

And, somewhat related insofar as fake references and supporting documention, the report includes this timely warning: "The FBI was among several federal agencies to recently warn companies of individuals working for the North Korean government applying to remote positions in IT or other tech jobs"

Bottom line: with remote interviews, some caution advised!


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Wednesday, March 19, 2025

AI and You



"Not learning to code just because there are AI coding agents is like not learning how to think because there are talk shows.
Writing = thinking.
Creating = imagining.
Coding = building.
If you're in tech in 2025 and you can't do these things, your career is at risk."

Daniel Miessler



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Saturday, March 8, 2025

Staff vs Line



No time for the staffers; no time for the talkers. "Action this day"!
"I preferred to deal with chiefs of organisations rather than counsellors. Everyone should do a good day’s work and be accountable for some definite task."

"It is easier to give directions than advice, and more agreeable to have the right to act, even in a limited sphere, than the privilege to talk at large"

Winston Churchill, WWII Memoirs



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Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Be careful!


A wise man once said: Be careful who you let on your ship, because some people will sink the whole ship just because they can't be captain.

Anonymous



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Monday, March 3, 2025

Blurring the role: Product Managers and Engineers


From Daniel Miessler's newsletter (somewhat paraphrased)

The line between the product manager and the engineer is blurring as more PM (product manager) tasks subsume what used to be an engineer's task because of the availability of an AI engine which the PM can prompt.

Miessler opines:
"This shouldn’t be surprising since the primitives here are 1) knowing what you want to build, 2) knowing why you want to build that vs. something else, and 3) pursuing that. "

The source for this insight is here LINK

Related: 
Other reports and articles report the decline generally in the industry for "coders". This job is being taken over by AI Agents. At the Davos Economic forum in January 2025, the Salesforce.com CEO said he wasn't hiring any software engineers on a net basis. New jobs would large go to digital agents.



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