….closer, lean on me now…….

Travis

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Rorie Devine, Betfair’s CTO starts out with a posting on greener computing.

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Patrick has noticed the parallels as has Werner Vogels.

There’s an awful lot of stuff to be learnt about building distributed systems from the human body including how control isn’t centralized, how reliability is achieved and how the constant replacement of cells contributes to overall health.

A couple of books worth a read:

• Imitation of Life: How Biology is inspiring computing
• Creation: Life and How to Make It

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Push versus pull is a constant debate in techie land. Interestingly, a lot of the web is adopting pull techniques. I wonder if some of that is leaking into these other areas or whether it’s just a general trend away from centralized solutions which we know don’t scale.

In any case, this is an interesting read and recommended by none other than Werner Vogels.

Scary reading for the control freaks and another example of decentralized control/intelligence. Of course, a few minutes thought makes it clear that pull is not good for everything.

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Quick wins are all about proving a point in short order. Small effort big results, big bang for little buck, low hanging fruit and so on.

But there’s surely a limit to what can be done? How fast do we need to deliver something for it to qualify as a quick win? At some point don’t we need to get strategic because we’ve grabbed up all the low hanging fruit and now have to work harder and longer?

Does it make sense to ask for a quick win to prove a long-term strategy? Any quick win will surely have limited if not zero immediate benefit because only with a reasonable amount of your strategy implemented could you expect tangible results? How would you measure what limited effect there is anyway? More significantly there has to be a risk that the pressure to provide quick wins actually damages your ability to pursue long term strategy. For example, you might end up constantly undoing what you’ve already done to take the next quick step because you cut corners last time. Pretty soon you’re undoing so much because you cut so many corners that you come to a halt.

I have this feeling that quick wins are kind of like nibbling at fruit bars and Red Bull whilst you work flat out to complete a project. Eventually you’re going to need to stop, cook a proper meal and sleep. You’ll probably need to go to the doctor too - consequences of a none-too-nutritious diet. You got that project done but at what cost long term?

Focusing on quick wins is surely just storing up pain for later. How much does it have to hurt before we stop trying for quick wins and get strategic? Would we even be aware of the pain? How do we become aware of this nasty aching? Do we maybe not bother pushing strategy until it hurts so bad that we have no choice but to take a risk and try something new we can’t predict?

Maybe there’s something in the air as Doug McClure’s been independently pondering similar questions.

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