The art of explanation.

My last proper post (in 2011) was about using simple English and reduce the time to comprehension. The CommonCraft blog [1] by Lee LeFever has great examples of explaining ideas in an easy to understand manner.

In his interview by Huffington Post [2], Lee had some advice for entrepreneurs pitching to potential investors - paraphrased extensively below.

1. Build context - try to get the investor to relate to the problem. A sense of 'I know that feeling'
2. Tell a story of how some pain / obstacle is removed by using the product. Focus on the 'why' before the 'how'
3. Use an analogy. Connect the product to something the investor already knows. Lee says that the producers of 'Alien' pitched it as 'Jaws in space'

I am not associated with Lee. However, if you are having difficulty explaining your idea, then Lee may be able to help you for a fee.

References:

1. http://www.commoncraft.com/blog
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-simon/explain-effectively_b_2260908.html

Expect new posts soon

Its been a very long time between blog posts for me. I hope that I can publish some interesting posts over the next few months.

Writing in Simple English and Reduce Time-to-comprehension

I have always been interested in how to communicate effectively with individuals whose first language is not English. It is obvious English is the default language of communication for most things, and nearly all things technical.

The most important factor is to reduce the Time-To-Comprehension by a reader. The aim is to help a reader understand exactly what I am trying to communicate, in the shortest possible time. Making things easy to understand is a quality of any great communicator.

In my opinion, following these rules will reduce Time-To-Comprehension

1. Use short sentences
2. Use bullet points - sometimes this is easier to read and understand than a long sentence
3. Avoid jargon. You can use jargon, abbreviations or acronyms as long as you give a definition to the term(s)
4. Use simple English

The Plain English Campaign website has excellent resources on how you can make your English writing simpler and easier to comprehend.

Simple Project Management

I came across a site that called "Simple Project Management". They have, a good description of project management that closely matches my opinion, which is:

• Agree on what is going to be done (scope)
• Work out how many people, and how long its going to take (Estimate)
• Start doing the work (track progress and report)
• Ensure quality of the work

This is similar to the description offered by simpleprojectmanagement.com (as viewed on 27 November 2010). 

Things to consider when using Cloud for your SOA

WSO2 are about to release the next version of WSO2 Stratos. You can try the cloud version or alternatively download and use it.

Stratos is the natural evolution of the cloud native SOA platform built by WSO2. It allows users (referred to as tenants) tailor their SOA solution without having to worry about the infrastructure details - which Stratos will look after.

I am going to look at two benefits (out of several) of Stratos (and cloud in general)

A. Stratos allows SOA practitioners to quickly build and test their solution.

This is not a feature, but a paradigm shift in creating solutions. No longer do SOA practitioners, and Solutions Designers/Architects need to worry about infrastructure availability to trial and test out their solution. These lead times are now a thing of the past.

Result: shorter cycles, faster sprints, increased capacity to get more done faster

B. Deploying Stratos in a "Private Cloud" will overcome any legal obstacles and/or security concerns

There is a very legitimate concern about hosting data in the cloud, and often what is not considered are the legal implications of hosting and processing data outside your country. Like copyright laws, this varies significantly based on which country you are talking about.

Deploying Stratos in a private cloud will overcome this, while making the benefits outlined in B available to your team.