My last hobby was the stock market. I am still actively following market news, earning reports, and adjusting my investments but about last year I went in deep and started following the whole of fintwit, weighing advantages and disadvantages of different trading platforms, and picking up a pretty large collection of literature on the topic of financial markets.

Whilst I didn't go far enough to completely change tracks in my career I did do the mini mini version of the Certified Financial Analyst level 1 program, through the free Investment Foundations

Although it was fun sourcing the data for the thesis and trying out some machine learning I was disappointed with how I ran the training of my model but managed to produce a good/okayish theseis in the end.

Anyhow, what brought me to talk a lot about myself was a story that used the top lists of images on Getty to measure investor sentiment with quite a bit of success: “Based on photos in the news, we can predict stock returns in global markets in 37 countries – a healthy cross-section of developed and developing economies.”. The main advantage that the author talks about in the news article is the fact that there is not a language barrier.

The digitsation as well as the ability to access such a large amount of data through the internet opens up a lot of possibilities for gaining insight (especially when it is from surprising sources).

/Oskar

The appeal by leading machine learning researcher Michael Jordan is definitely not the first time that the ubiquitous use of the term artificial intelligence is protested. The article goes into some detail about the critque of how the term is being used and how it holds back development of the field by drawing away focus from the challenge of developing plantary-scale ML that delivers value to humankind without increasing inequities.

Other than just a marketing term for the public, Michael Jordan also says that even technologists get the wrong idea.

In my opinion the exposure that we have to ML as consumers today along with an increasing awareness of the use of data for these systems require even more communication with the public that what is currently done. Bringing some superficial study of the area into school curriculums would likely be a large benefit both in terms of understanding (and crossover to statistics) as well as spurring on children to persue the field.

There was quite a bit of buzz about new evidence of European presence in North America as far back as AD 1021. Without going into the Scandinavian history I picked up whilst at university it was exciting to have more evidence.

At the same time, it is really quite amazing to think about what was possible even back then. The broad network of the Viking's were the first steps (and subsequently lost) steps towards a globalised world. I do not know how this voyages were funded or organised but it really is incredible how such a distance was covered.

Fast forwarding to the growth of European empires, I found it interesting to learn how these voyages were invested into somewhat like the venture capitalists of today investing into startups today. Collectively investing in vessels to spread risk and investing in technology in order to build bigger, faster ships that would be able to carry more stock on voyages.

/Oskar

Having mentioned green steel for a car company yesterday, I thought I would mention another ingredient for more sustainable mobility today: recycling batteries. Without getting to much into the physics, it was shown that NMC111 cathodes (1/3 nickel, 1/3 maganese, 1/3 cobalt) made from recycled materials were shown to be superior to "fresh" cathodes.

It should be cautioned that the study was carried out by engineers at the company developing the recycled cathodes along with researchers at the US Battery Consortium.

In any case, if the performance of recycled materials are also up to scratch (or even in this case superior) to their first-use rivals the argument is strengthened even more to switch.

Another IEEE article looks at how the industry is heating up in Europe and North America, and I think that the rapid shift from ICE will drive further innovation within this area.

Outside of the innovation happening within retail (particularly Amazon, the warehouses of Ocado, and the adoption of till-less systems by Tesco à la Amazon Amazon Go), the other 'old school' industry that there is a lot of news about is the steel industry. In the U.S. there was an article outlining the areas focussed on by U.S. Steel as part of their digital transformation, mainly automation, smart manufacturing, mobility, and advanced analytics.

A home player that I have heard about is the Germany-based Klöckner, which launched kloeckner.i in 2014 in order to automate their supply and service, offering their steel and other material on an online platform (through a webshop but also an API).

Another steel innovation was the fossil-free Swedish steel that was delivered to Volvo in August of this year. It is thought that the process used could be scaled up to produce commercial quantities of steel by 2026.

As with how portfolio management is looked at as making sure the "right" projects and programs are being undertaken in order to further the organisation's strategy, the project manager spends their time with the main goal of making sure that the right work is being done.

Project managers are hands-on executor of project and oversee day-to-day operations. Communication is a large part of the job, and the project manager needs to be able to communicate with internal and external project stakholders.

The Standard of Portfolio Management (2017, p19) describes the project manager as being responsibe for: "The effective initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing of assigned projects within the portfolio in accordance with corresponding objectives and specifications".

/Oskar

Projects go through a number of phases from their beginning to project completion. These stages do not have to necessarily be completely distinct phases and may also be itterated on. Each phases of a project is given a name, requirements, duration, and expected outcomes. Some common phases are design, prototyping, and testing.

From my previous experience I have classified digitisation as the digitising of data (that was previously uncaptured or in paper forms etc.), digitalisation as moving business processes to a digital state, and digital transformation as a company-wide shift in focussing on digital business models and processes.

The following definitions were offered as part of the first lecture of the SU course Strategies, Benefits, and Alignment:

• DigitisationThe process of making information available and accessible in a digital format.
• DigitilisationThe process of considering how best to apply digitised information to simplify specific operations.
• Digital transformationThe process of devising new business applications that integrate all the digitsed data and digital applications.

Continuing the week of investigating key topic areas covered in the course I will do a write up of portfolio management. The concept of portfolio management is pretty core to the entirety of the course and other aspects covered such as risk management and benefits realisation mangement all tie in under the concept.

As a guide to the topic I will be going through the foundational elements section of the PMBOK Guide (2017) as well as the article listed under suggested reading.

First off, PMI (2017 p38) defines a portfolio as projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives. Managing projects at these different levels (project, program, and portfolio) requires good communication between the seperate managers, especially given that the managers are often engaging with the same stakeholders and possibly using the same resources(PMI 2017, p38). Managing a portfolio ensures that the "right" programs and projects are being done, or in other words, programs and projects that helps fulfill the goals, actions and policies which move the organisation in the right direction are pusued (follow organisational strategy). Components of a portfolio must be quanitfiable in that they can be ranked, compared, and measured.

Programs and projects that make up the one or more portfolios being managed do not necessarily be dependent or related to eachother. Unfortunately here is another list from the textbook (PMI 2017, p40) which describes the aims of PMI:

• Guide organizational investment decisions.
• Select the optimal mix of programs and projects to meet strategic objectives.
• Provide decision-making transparency.
• Prioritize team and physical resource allocation.
• Increase the likelihood of realizing the desired return on investment.
• Centralize the management of the aggregate risk profile of all components.

A large focus (and subsequently time and resources) is pit on the projects and programs that contribute the most to the company's strategy. This should be a way to maximise the value of the portfolio.

/Oskar

Project Management Institute (2017), PMBOK Guide

For this week's set of blog post I will be looking at the major topics that are covered in the course. Starting with the concept of risk management. Risk management is covered in Chapter 11 of the Guide to PMBOK (6th Edition) in quite a bit of detail. This will act as a summary and possibly some discussion on the main points.

Plan risk management

Risk management is an organised endeavor which is broken into stages (risk identification, qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, and the planning, implementation and monitoring of risk responses). Before conducting risk management there is a process of planning risk management activities.

Plan risk management can occur at the conception of the project and possibly additional times during the lifetime of the project and involves definining how risk management activities should be conducted for a given project. Risk management measures should be in proportion to the importance/size of the project.

For each of the stages outline by PMI (2017), there are defined inputs, tools and processes, and outputs.

For plan risk management common inputs includde the project charter (high level description of the projects, its boundries and risks), the project management plan ("the document that describes how the project will be executed, monitored and controlled, and closed." (PMI 2017, p92), as well as project documents that can detail lessons learnt from previous projects, a risk register which defines the responses to given risks, and a risk report which details project risk exposure.

The tools and techniques that are used in plan risk management include the perspectives of individual or groups of experts within the organisation. A related tool is the use of meetings, with the actual risk management plan being an outcome of a specific meeting set up or as part of the kick-off. Another general tool that is mentioned by PMI (2017) is the use of data anaylsis. Although data analysis should be used in supporting most business decisions, for plan risk management data analysis is also used as a way to guage the risk appetite of project stakeholder through stakeholder analysis.

Finally the output of the plan risk management process is a risk management plan that forms part of the general project management plan and details how risk management activities will be organised and carried-out (PMI 2017, p322). Some of the elements of this plan that are highlighted by PMI (2017) include a risk strategy which is a general description of how risks are to be managed in the scope of the project, this can be followed by a specific outline of the methodology in terms of specific tools and data sources. Clear boundries can be set in the risk management plan by explicitly detailing roles and responsibilities as well as scheduling and budgets of risk management activites. An aspect of the risk management plan that is given particular focus is on the clustering of risks into distinct categories (Risk Breakdown Structure, RBS) which include technical risk, management risk, commercial risk, and external risks.

Identify Risks

Risk identification focuses on documenting the individual and overall project risks. My interpretation of the outline is that the activity takes as many project-relevant documents (not just the PMI defined project documents but also documentation in the form of any agreements/contracts ) as possible and draw out the risks from these. One interesting aspect of this is the level of collaboration among project participants in the process of risk identification as well as the need to approach the task in an itterative manner due to the evolving nature of risks in a project.

Risk analysis

Qualitative analysis

Qualiativerisk analysis tries to sort individual project risks according to their impact on project success (probability x amount of impact). Qualitative risk anaylsis occurs at regular intervals during the project, and may even be formally done in an agile context at the beginning of each itteration.

Quantitive analysis

Quantitative risk analysis is more in depth and there is a need to have a good amount of high-quality data. For projects where this is possible (and deemed necessary), results from the data analysis can be incorporated into exisitng project documents, noteably the risk report which key findings (simulation results, risk diagrams, lists of most threatening risks, etc.)

Risk responses acitivites

Risk responses are the approaches that are decided on to approach particular risks as well as other risk mitigation strategies. The responses work to lower specific risks as well as the overall risk exposure.

Planning

Planning identifies the particular approaches that will be used to handle risks and oportunties (called positive risks in the reading). Some strategies for risk include escalate, avoid, mitigate (lower probability or impact rather than complete avoidance), accept, transfer, share.

Implementation

Ensures that agreed upon actions are executed as planned.

Monitoring

Most important role is to keep the transparency of the what risks are being addressed and communicating this with stakeholders. Reponses may be adjusted.

/Oskar

Project Management Institute (2017), PMBOK Guide

I listen regularly to the Pivot Podcast. One of the topics that Scott Galloway likes to talk about is the status of higher education. He protests that the current status of education is one of certification and not actual education and that instead of a public good, education is a "Berkin bag".

One interesting development in the education field has been the growth in online offerings as well as an offering of smaller courses that do not require a large financial or time commitment (4-12 week courses). Certificate courses, such as Grow with Google, hint at the possibility that such certification would be a way to land a highly-paid tech job with without a degree. Such changes (along with other trends such as coding bootcamps) may be a sign of changing employment attitudes in tech fields.

Much like this series of blog posts is one requirement for my course in Strategies, benefits and alignments, and that there are seperate types of reqquirements in the form of a written examination and a report, businesses collect and group different kinds of requirements.

At the beginning stages of a project, requirements may be laid out at a very broad level, before becomming more detailed after more specific requirements are found out. An important aspect of any requirement is that it should be unambiguous and measureable. Two broad types of requirements highlighted by the guide to PMBOK are business requirements (looking at the needs of stakeholders) and technical (how particular stakeholder needs are implemented).

A more exhausitve list of technical requirements is also procided by the guide to PMBOK:

• Business requirements

  Higher-level needs of the organisation as a whole. These descibe the actual problem or opportunity that is being addressed and the reasons why the project is to be persued.

• Stakeholder requirements

  These are the needs of a particular stakeholder or stakeholder group.

• Solution requirements

  These refer to the characteristics of the soltuion being used to meet the needs of the business or stakeholders and can be described through detailing the functions and features of the solution. Solution requirements are expressed as functional (behaviours of the product such as a certain action that can be taken) and nonfunctional (describe qualities of an effective product such as reliability) requirements.

• Transition and readiness requirements

  Temporary requirements that are needed in order to go from the current state to the desired future state.

• Project requirements

  Conditions pertaining to the particular project such as deadlines and other contractual obligations or constraints.

• Quality requirements

  These are particular quality criterea that validate the successful completion of the product. This could be, for example, the attainment of a particular certification.

/Oskar

Windows 11 was officially released yesterday, after having been announced this June as the successor to Windows 10. The first version of Windows was released in 1985, since then the hardware, usage patterns, and the abilities of computing platforms has changed dramatically. Before the release of Windows 1.0, there was the project managment software Microsoft Project which was publically released in 1984 after having been used internally by Microsoft, which appears to be, at least in the early editions, mostly a Gannt chart with added information. In any case, the development of Microsoft suite of software and the evolution of the operating system has required the use of diligient project management and a lot of feedback among teams in order to keep a certain consistency among Microsoft-branded products.

Bonus: Microsoft overview on the history and current day project management

/Oskar

The outage of several Facebook-owned services yesterday came with a slump of around 5% in its share price. The outage comes along with other bad publicity in recent weeks.

There is a lot of information on a number of online forums and on the Facebook engineering blog. Ignoring the cause of the technical issues, I think it is a valid critism to point out that there shouldn't be a joint dependency between them. There are definitely gains for Facebook to be had from the integration of their seperate services, but from a resiliency (and regulatory) perspective there is a clear weakness.

/Oskar

Prices of containers have seen dramatic rises. A chart from The Economist shows the dramtic rise at the beginning of the year, and this has been followed by massive congestion at ports. In order to combat rising prices Walmart and Home Depot are chartering their own private cargo vessels in order to secure capacity in the run up to the holiday season (Bloomberg).

This may mark a shift for large retailers, although I prefer the anecdote of Swedish supermarket chains securing their prawn supply through ownership of their own fleets of shrimp boats (or so I heard when visiting the fish auction in Gothenburg at an ungodly hour of the morning).

The growth in recent years of Amazon delivery infrastructure, is begging to have a container ship added to its fleet of jets. Let's see what the future brings.

/Oskar

The analysis of the Systems Thinking white paper is dragging on a bit. I know that I am ignorant in this space and there is a lot to take into consideration and a number of approaches but as a reactive take on the theory I just feel like it distills into the common advice of consultants of not succumbing to "Silo Mentality". Anyhow, this final post on the paper will list some of the tools that are suggested to help witj systems thinking.

• (Adapted) Fishbone Diagrams - 'Double Q Diagram'

  Taking the structure of a tradition Ishikawa/Fishbone diagram, hard (quantitative) and soft (qualitative) variables that affect a given problem are noted.

• Context diagrams

  Context diagrams frames the systems position in its environment. Checklists like PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, environment, and legal) can be used as a prompt.

• Actor maps

  Actor maps provide an overview of key organisations as well as the roles (indivduals) present that are affected by the system. The entities that are identified are likely to be stakeholders in any proposed solution.

• Concept maps

  Concept maps are a way of representing knowledge of a particular topic. This is done from with the main concept and then breaking down this main topic into other subtopics whose relationship with the main topic is shown through links with lables such as 'causes' and 'contributes to'.

• Trend maps

  Trend maps show the trends affecting the system. The usefulness of trend maps is increased through mapping the changes in the trend over time.

• Causal loop diagrams

  As explained, causal loop diagrams allow teams to develop a shared understanding of the problem and their place in it. They do this by identifying psoitive and negative feedback loops (reinforcing and balancing processes) between system elements.

/Oskar

From covering the white paper we saw why systems thinking is important but didn't cover explicitly what it was. In this blog post I will be further working through the text to distill the main points on systems thinking.

Systems thinking addresses Ludwig von Bertalanffy observation of the world being made up of interconnected entities. These "often hierarchically organised, technical and social entities […] produce behaviours that cannot be predicted by analysing the behaviours of their parts or sums."

Mapping the purpose of systems thinking to how it works operationally, we have a framework that uses approaches, tools and methods to help explore and map dynamic complexity that includes:

• Approaches to think about and frame dynamically complex problems and their solutions
• Diagrams and other tools to visualise and understand dynamic complexity.
• A vocabulary with which to express understanding of dynamic complexity.
• Method(s) to coherently apply the approaches and tools.

Key principles

Due to the occurences of problems without strict boundries, and dynamically complex problems, the following principles need to be followed:

• Be aware of the broader environment

  Identify the patterns and trends that act as inputs and outputs in the problem environment as well as how these change over time. This removes the risk of isolating focus on discrete events.

• Recognise he impact of a system's structure on the behaviour

  Often circular cause and effect relationships must be understood and behaviour should not just be attributed to external forces, but a force of internal actors that manage policies and system operations.

• View causality as ongoing and uncertain

  Causes are not independent and influces are not only one-way, with causes driving each another and feedback affecting causes.

• Mental models reflect the current reality and expected outcome

  Mental models are often flawed and incomplete, as statistician Geroge Box noted "All models are wrong, but some are useful".

/Oskar

Leading on from the yesterday's superficial introduciton into systems theory there was also a white paper released by the Association for Project Management and INCOSE UK Ltd in the recommended reading that provides a gentle introduction into systems thinking. Any quoted sections of text in this post refers to this paper.

Systems thinking is a framework that helps address "complex, uncertain, and/or interconnected problems which do not have simple solutions"

The importance of systems thinking is summarised under the following points:

• Better understanding of the problem

  Factors that create a problem, and the environment in which that problem occurs, and why the system behaves in that given way can be better understood by users. This breaks down into looking at the compnents of the system and their relationships and the different cause and affect cycles.

• Improve possible solutions

  Through an analytical view of the problem and a better understanding of problem allows for superior solution formulation as there is more insight into how the propsed solutions fits into the broader environment. Revlealing and making assumptions explicit lends itself to identifying, assessing, and managing risks.

• Appealing tools which improve understanding aid in stakeholder buy-in

  Tools such as causal loop diagrams "allows teams to develop a shared understanding of the problem and their place in it". Outside of the scope of an individual team, such diagrams can also be effective in "communicating both problems and proposed solutions"

• Complex, dynamic problems can be addressed

  Complex dynamics problems, i.e. problems "characterised by non-linearity and component interdependencies", which are ineffective by traditional top-down divide-and-conquer approaches, can be solved through identifying "key leverage points"

The steps summarised above have been shown to reduce costs in both private and public sectors. This also has effects of improving the speeds of delivery of products and services, and isolating and controlling risks. Cultural changes in organisations appear in the shift from blaming individuals of teams to thinking about how everyone is contributing to the problem.

/Oskar

One of the links for recommended reading was this somewhat retro site, which breaks down the main steps in the development of systems theory.

Systems theory was originally proposed by Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 40s. As summarised by Don Clark, Bertalanffy's 1968 text says that "a system is a complex of interacting elements and that they are open to, and interact with their environments. In addition, they can acquire qualitatively new properties through emergence, thus they are in a continual evolution.".

Robert Gagnè made a next step in 1962 by adding the concept of psychotechnology, i.e. using technology for psychological purposes, in systems development and working on the theme of systems design being to integrate people and machines into an operational system (nwlink). For systems development, after stating the purposes of the system, operation design, and assigning funtions to 'man' and machine, there are three development stages for both man and machine which are undertaken in parallel; these are: the design stage, the development stage, and the testing stage. These stages are then followed by systems training, evaluation, and a final operation stage.

/Oskar

The evolving fuel crisis in the UK, primarily attributed to a shortfall of 100,000 lorry drivers (72,000 were lost between Q2 2019 and Q2 2021 🇬🇧🇪🇺), has led to, amongst other measures, the UK government to suspend the competition act of 1998 which would allow suppliers to share information on in-demand areas and potentially provide fuel to one another.

This sort of reaction was seen in the aftermath of the initial phase of the coronavirus and is an interesting example of ad hoc changes in laws. Changes in the law usually involve a transitionary period and planning from the side of the company on how to conform with these changes. I strugled to find anything out about any lasting impact from the communcation among companies in the food industry during the suspension at the outset of the coronavirus.

/Oskar

The EU announced plans to introduce hamonised charging for mobiles and other portable electronic devices which, if passed by the European Parliament, would give industry a 24 month transition period to adapt to the standard, which also includes standardised fast charging, an unbundling of a charger with the purchase of a device, and more transparency with the customer (European Commision).

There have been negative reponses from the likes of Apple, with accusations of stifling innovation. I could see that this might be a problem as the standard evolves and I do not have the technical background on the subject to make an educated comment but it seems that the current C port type should be able to keep up with demands, currenly supporting standards USB 2.0 (2001) to USB4 (2019). In terms of innovation it also seems that for mobile devices the struggle is for widespread contactless charging.

The EC were proud about being able to go from 30 to 3 different charges, but felt the need to step in for the last few. I don't find 3 that dramatic personally. With a standard charging adaptor I can take use a cable which accepts Type A and use cables for whether I'm charging my headphones (mini b), Garmin smartwatch, or phone (c).

/Oskar

The debt crisis at Evergrande, one of China's largest real estate developers, is causing a lot of chatter online. The potential fallout of one most indebted companies is causing a lot of speculation into what might happen.

From the list of generic causes of project failure there are a large amount that apply to the case of Evergrande:

• Stratgic drift/lack of focusEvergrande has delved into ventures in industries unrelated to property development such as theme parks, insurance and wealth management, and automotive.
• Lack of monitoring and controlThe large amount of property developments and the amount of subsidaries makes it hard to gain an insight into current assets and liabilities of the company.
• Poor screeningLack of money to continue a development as well as faulty construction work and a lack of demand led to a spectacular demolition of 15 high-rise blocks that had stood empty since 2013.

/Oskar

During the course in Strategies, benefits, and allignments sudden cancellation of projects has been discussed before. The cancellation of $40 billion (in 2016) is however on another level. This must have been a large blow for France, both in its relationship with Australia and the US (it recalled its envoys) and must add up to quite a large hole considering the rising of the value of the contracts from it 2016 levels as well as the other sub-contractors and entities that proft non-directly from the deal. In terms of diplomacy it seems that talks at the end of October might go some way in making up.

/Oskar

A paper by Kaiser, Arbi, and Ahleman from 2015 explores the impact of strategic changes on project selection in the German construction industry.

The papers starts by highlighting that the amount of possible projects to be undertaken is often in excess of the capabilities to execute on them. Project portfolio management (PPM) is used to keep an optimal state of existing and new projects and balancing financial and strategic incentives.

Responding to price pressure, two of the three companies put focus on developing technologies and building up competencies in highly technical aspects of the construction inddustry - identified in terms of Porter's generic strategies as moving from low-cost strategy to a combination of segmentation and diversification strategies. This approach to PPM immediately led to a more discriminative approach to project selection, with the criteria for project selection being:

• In a market worth entering from a strategic standpoint
• Good fit with the companies resources
• Sufficiently post risk-adjusted profitability

PPM Success

Before integrating the authors findings with the theory, and presenting their conclusions, the authors take a look at success through strategically aligned PPM, these include:

• Strucural change to drive PPM efficiency and effectiveness. In the beginning of the paper it was pointed out that senior management often drives strategy whilst project selection is a task of the project management office. This imbalance can lead to a divergence between strategy and the types of projects that are being picked. The adaptaption of the organisation structures of the companies that were investigated helped with information flows (both in quality and time).
• Improved decision-making quality. Through a central planning process for the key resources (not only construction equipment but also project managers and engineers) in their businesses, decision makers were more sure of their decisions and had better insights into project risks.
• Strcutural alignment promotes successful strategy implementation. Through a focussed approach on project selection and better information flows, resources are better allocated and wasteful investments are avoided.

/Oskar

I guess the recent leaks don't present any information that is majorly surprising, but it is still disappointing to know that Facebook neglects to respond to its shortcomings. I doubt that anything will come of the files but it is still deeply disturbing to know that human traffickers and drug cartels were abusing the platform. Whilst the body issues from Instagram point isn't such a wild leap of the imagination then at least hopefully the issue is made more prominent through the leaks.

/Oskar

Germany has been very anti atomic power, and is eyeing a complete phase out by next year. This is at the same time that China is planning to introduce a throium salt reactor, which can provide the basis of safer and greener energy.

Without diverging into a discussion on "Atomkraft? Nein danke" it is interesting to break down the energy mix as a strategic statement. Naturally, a reliable energy supply is essential to national security and reliance on other countries poses a threat. But apart from this when talking about energy it is exteremely challenging because of the long time cycles that are required for planning and construction of facillities (whether that is comissioning a new power station, or setting up windturbines). The increase in electromobility, keeping up with industry pressures, and goals in reducing carbon emissions make energy planning a unenviable task.

In any case, having the highest prices electricity prices in Europe is definitely not a great sign.

/Oskar

I caught the news today that Taco Bell are introducing a Taco Subscription. Although I have not had the pleasure (/s) to sample a Taco Bell Taco it will be interesting to see if similar ideas take off in order to build habits with a brand and increase loyalty.

From my limited cultural exposure to the restuarant chain it also seems like a pretty good way for Taco Bell to get customers back into their stores and, well, you're not just going to get one small taco. It also appears that the $5-10 30-day subscription can be activated in the app for a small number of locations.

p.s. Taco Bell restuarants exist in Cyprus, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the UK.

/Oskar

There has been a fair bit of buzz about the new wave of delivery services popping up in European cities offering deliveries. I have only placed a single order with Gorillas and, yeah, it was pretty quick and it saved me having to drag an unhappy two year old to the supermarket for just a handfull of items.

There are some good quality write ups about the phenomenon, including from Europe's quick-commerce startups are overhyped (TechCrunch), Speedy grocery delivery firms are racing to survive (Wired), and a look at the evoluton in delivery times and the current VC buzz from my previous employer (🇩🇪hy) but I am mostly interested at how the operations side of the business works after seeing the evolution of Ocado (check out this Capgemini Case Study) over the years.

Prerequisites (without being cynical and stating the massive need for VC money to subsidise it all) include a high population dense area, cheap access to suitable small warehouses (according to Wired Gorillas has 16 in Berlin alone) which allow the firms to minimise the distance needed to cover, delivery riders that are willing to go up against formidable traffic and weather conditions.

/Oskar

Chapter 2 of PMBOK investigates the environment in which projects operate in, which can be classified into internal factors (e.g. culture and structure, company geographic distribution, resource availability) as well as external. Whilst indentifying many of the external factors requires detailed anaylsis and interpretation, I would argure that web scraping, when the program is designed properly in terms of data sources as well as how insights are drawn from the collected data is one of the most useful tools available.

There is a staggering amount of digitilised information, and a lot of this is also public facing. When examining marketplace conditions, financial considerations (e.g. FOREX, interest rates, and inflation), and physical environmental elements (e.g. weather, constraints ~traffic(?)) the majority of this data could be collected relatively easily.

To close on, there was an excellent overview of what to look out for when web scraping posted on Hacker News.

/Oskar

In the lecture today it was pointed out that policy decisions would be very unpopular when high-profile issues were reduced to just pure cost and benefits. Within the discussion the cost of a life was mentioned (in Sweden 22MM SEK ~$2.6MM and upwards of $9MM in the US used by the EPA and Department of Transportation).

As is topical of the moment Cornavirus and the various restrictions were brought up. The argument was however reduced to the example of the value of a young child's schooling vs an old person. Of course in a two hour lecture the topic can't be thorughly explored but I found it very simplistic. The quick retort is that what is the value of a grandparent in the child's life. Going from that point there is just a stagggering amount of variables that need to be looked at. A longer lasting pandemic, the populace feeling more at risk from a lack of stricter hygine standard, higher numbers of people infected at all age demographics.

In any case I am exhausted of these discussions of restrictions, especially when the restrictions that were taken were just the bare minimum.

/Oskar

I do like this exercise of trying to write every day but I have noticed that it is quite tricky and I did have a backlog of three posts already at one point. Additionally, it was explained that posts are only required for weekdays for my course so I'll see if I can use the weekend to at least generate some ideas and at best make a good start in preparing writing for the coming week.

/Oskar

The previous week has had a lot of news covering the horrible events that took place 20 years ago today, as well as relections on how that day has impacted the following 20 years. I am not anyone who knows much about international relations, politics, or conflict studies but the day like for everyone else has effected my life, and its reprecussions up to the scenes of chaos at Kabul airport and the Taliban entering the Presesidential palace has ellicited a number of emotions.

I was only seven when 9/11 happened. I had flown on on a family holiday to Crete a week or so prior and enjoyed visiting the pilots cockpit, and returned on a flight to Heathrow on that day. From what my parents have told me was that cabin crew appeared down, there was a lack of newspapers on board, and Heathrow was a ghost town when we arrived around midnight‚. They only found out what had happened when they turned on BBC news after they had got me and my brother, after having fallen asleep in the car, into our beds.

In terms of stuff that has filled me in a little about the leadup, the event itself, and the aftermath has been the documentary series Turning Point on Netflix as well as the resources from the Imperial War Museum.

Although this blog entry is not strictly tied to the course, there are several topics that can be explored relating to that day and changes made afterwards including: the amazing ability to shut down and divert air traffic in the initial stages of the attack representing such a interruption in a massive system, international trade (Authorized Economic Operator Programmes), and of course privacy and data collection. In any case, I am glad that I could express my small personal experience and eart goes out to those who didn't have such an innocent experience on that day and I hope they find peace.

/Oskar

According to a press release by the Linux foundation, Software Package Data Exchange® (SPDX®) specification has been published by ISO as "the international open standard for security, license compliance, and other software supply chain artifacts".

I hadn't heard of the standard before but the three snippets of information that highlights the importance of this standard:

• Between eighty and ninety percent (80%-90%) of a modern application is assembled from open source software components.
• SPDX results from ten years of collaboration from representatives across industries, including the leading Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vendors – making it the most robust, mature, and adopted SBOM standard.
• Intel, Microsoft, Siemens, Sony, Synopsys, VMware, and WindRiver are just a small sample of the companies already using SPDX to communicate Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) information in policies or tools

I will see if I get confronted with the standard when working with other clients. It does seem however like a very good way to document resources used in a project for licencing purposes. Through a standardised syntax, I assume that it can save a lot of time in reviewal efforts.

Bonus: a nice resource from the European Commission to help find appropriate licences.

Benefits Realisation Mangement (BRM) are all the methods and processes that are used by organisations in identifying benefits, executing (its BRM) plans and sustaining the benefits gained from project, program and portfolio initiatives (PMI 2019, p7). A benefit is any gain realised from a business activity, while value is a more rounded term which is the net of the sum of all benifts, less their costs. A challenge in business is alligning costs to the activities that can provide a large benefit gain from its costs and is usually quite subjective. Intantigble benefits that might be gained from an initiative, like investment in a better user experience of the website, can quantified by looking at click-through rates, or changes in sales volumes.

A BRM Plan is developed by an organsation to provide a broad view of how the orgnaisation plans to address benefits management and documents explanations for planned activities, timeframes, and criteria that can be used to measure achievement of benefits (PMI 2019, p10).

Examples of benefits that are provided by PMI (2019, p11) include:

• Increased customer satisfaction
• Alignment of strategy and execution
• Increased productivity
• Competitive advantage
• Effective operations
• Improved cost control
• Improved market competitiveness
• Predictable delivery performance
• Improved communications
• Efficient decision making

BRM Core Principles

Net benefits justify the use of invested resources
• Commencement of work is driven by benefits identificationExpected value from planned benefits is what guides the thinking and decision making about the work to be undertaken
• Planned benefits are identified in authorising documents
• Benefits realisation is holistically planned and managed
• Governance and adequate resources are essential to BRM success

Since yesterday, Bitcoin has been legal tender in El Salvador, after the Bitcoin Law was passed my legislative assembly of El Salvador in June 2021. I am not a fan of crypto currencies but it is interesting so see a decision on a national level.

I respect the arguments against Bitcoin in terms of its high energy useage, unclear benefits for its use in day-to-day applications, slow processign etc. but I confess that the biggest reason behind me not supporting it is becuase of the culture surrounding cryptocurrency. I have speculated in a few meme stocks with small amounts of money, but the fanatism in the cryptocurrency world is just not something that I want to read or think more than necessary. A core value is decentralisation, but I believe that progress will only be made within the usual realms - central banks. This is why I'm eagerly looking at the progress of the e-krona over the year and curous of how the roll out of e-CNY in 2022.

Being a resident in Germany, I just look forward to being able to pay with any non-cash equivalent everywhere sometime soon.

/Oskar

As part of the circular economy action plan the EC have already targeted 54 action points to increase sustainability, highlighting the importance of increasing the ease of recycling devices and repairing devices (even if this is just the ability to switch a battery). Although there are physical issues that lead to a device being discarded, there is also the issue of software support. The proposal from the EU is that OEM need to provide security updates for 5 years. Germany, according to a response by spokesperson from the ministry of finance, would extend the length of security upgrades to 7 years.

With a more ecological mindset gaining traction, circular economy being a widely used term, and right to repair gaining traction it will be interesting to see how the proposals are finally implemented legally and how government can come to an agreement with industry who are not keen on offering more than 2-3 years and profit from being able to have a regular sales cycle.

/Oskar

PMI published a guide in 2018 to assist in developing skills that help project maagers in a disruptive market environment. It is also part of my readig for the third week, so free game for a quick writeup.

In the guide PMI outlines their top six skills to prosper in the 'digital age':

• Data science (data management, analytics, and big data)

• Innovative mindset

• Security and privacy knowledge

• Legal and regulatory compliance knowledge

• Ability to make data-driven decisions

• Collaborative leadership

The six points that are not completely surprising although I would have probably included communication skills, understanding of systems, and an entrepreneurial mindset in addition to a purely innovative one. I would argue that you could bundle security and privacy knowledge under legal and regulatory compliance knowledge as some of the biggest compliance issues in organisations today are related to the privacy and security of personal data. Another redundancy in the list would be Data science and then the ability to make data-driven decisions. Of course actual decision making is another activity, but I would argue that the creation of analytics and the initial processing of big data would be done in a way to help with determining the parameters of a decision. Thew final point of collaborative leadership was new to me but at face value seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.

The report goes on to, like many other similar presentations, to talk about the importance of cultivating staff through investig with talent which should results in smoother processes, better offerings for customers, as well as boost innovation. This is naturally supported by nurturing company culture, and foster habit-forming behavior that drives employees to increase their capabilities

After writing about Strava for yesterday's post, I look at another social network. LinkedIn. There have been a number of parodies about the Facebookification of LinkedIn, whether that is a Twitter profile or subreddit documenting bad and cringeworthy posts and creepy dms, or even an entire satirical social network to mock it that was trending on HN.

For all of its downsides, I feel that LinkedIn is still a valuable tool. Although I am not working in marketing, nor finding cold leads I do feel that the site does allow one to maintain a professional network that would be not possible without it. After doing some research on the engineering department of a buldge bracket bank, I had a VP writing to me about open engineering positions. This later led me to attending a small recruitment webinar of around 20 students and still being able to reach out directly to him should I want to apply for a position. Another aspect is that it provides a visable space online to showcasre academic and professional qualification, a nice result in the google search results compared to an old Facebook comment, or an irrelevant article.

Digitsing work and academic history, and centralising the job search to one platform (LinkedIn is aggregating job postings on other job boards and company websites) changes the traditional processes involved in applying for new jobs, reaching out to potential customers, or doing research on teams at a given company. The intelligence benefit is a large one, this being unfortuantely demonstrated by intelligence agencies warning of large numbers of fake profiles being used to gain access to classified information.

I guess the conclusion is to use it as a tool for the purposes it was designed for and try to avoid getting sucked in to yet another timeline.

/Oskar

For Cyber Monday last year I bought a Garmin Forerunner 45 running watch. After a couple of months on an adapting half marathon plan, I joined the exercise-tracking social network Strava and have since then increased my fitness substantially, spent a ton on more running tech and gear, as well as participated in a Triathlon (Olympic Distance).

When not part of a track team, or a triathlon club training can be quite a solitary endaevor. However with offering such as Strava there is a social aspect introduced into an undertaking that 10 years ago would have envolved logging the distances run into a run diary and that would have been it. Although I have a good deal of motivation myself, there is something from getting a 'kudos' on a run, whether it is an old school friend, an old boss, or sometimes even a local professional athelete.

The closing of gyms during the coronavirus pandemic, more flexible working schedules, and travel bans are some factors that have likely contributed to a growth in running (ISPO). In addtion to these, favouring indivdual transport instead of cramming into a packed bus or underground train (as well as the supply-side shocks) has led to bottlenecks in the production of bikes bicycling.com.

Hopefully the trend in running will stay put. I have seen the benfits in it myself, both physically and mentally. On a macro view this should also lead to a more fulfilled, healthier populace. My health insurance, TK has even rewarded me for the participation in the Berlin Triathlon and from reaching weekly step goals. Although there is a valid argument in not letting insurance companies to get too much information about the person they insure, positive reinforcememt in terms of an active lifestyle should, much like them covering smoking cessation programmes, reduce their coverage costs.

One year on from starting my focused exercise program I am now, with the help of a new Garmin (Forerunner 935) and a heart rate strap, nerding out at the decline in my resting heart rate and seeing the effects of a reppearing knee issue by seeing differing ground contact time between my left and right foot. If this dramitically changes my running we shall see but in any case the market for fitness tech is health, with a CAGR of 18.9% from 2021 to 2028 for wearables. VCs, led by Sequoia Capital and TCV, siezing the fitness and wellbeing trend, closed a $100MM Series F funding round in November 2020 to value Strava at $1.4B.

/Oskar

In yesterday's I was surprised that I had forgotten about the proposed European Digital ID and it was already proposed a while ago. Although it wasn't in the articles I found it turns out that from the 1st September 2021 the proposal that allows citizens to identify themselves purely with mobile-based identification came into law. This is an important step towards realising the rest of goals annouced in combination with the European Digital ID.

As seen on the offical article posted on the topic, the identification will prove a central role on the bigger deadline of the end of 2022 for regional Government to provide their service digitally.

Being a Swedish citizen in Germany it has definitly been a frustrating expereince seeing how many things that I could do simply by logging on using a bank ID to the Tax agency in Sweden requires several appointments with different agencies and a number of fees and extensive waiting times in Germany. I hope the end of 2022 is a realistic goal for Germany as this uncessary friction has a massive hidden cost.

/Oskar

Somehow I was able to completely miss (or forget about) the plan from Brussels for a digital identity for all Europeans. From the initial overview of the features I thought it was limited to a way to display a valid (in all EU27)indentification document from a mobile device. The 'eID' aspect of the plan is just one part, with other features including a digital signature service, an 'eTimestamp' which would provide proof of an action online e.g. a purchase, and authentication (of apps and websites).

This meaure would be great for a lot of european ideals and I would welcome such a solution greatly. On the website there is some further information as well as how the proposed solution fit into the eIDAS Regulation which was adopted in 2014, but didn't specify how it should be used among companies and private individuals and also make countries obliged to implement it.

I guess we'll have to wait for the first pilot projects of the scheme at the end of 2022!

/Oskar

Microsoft's $7.5B all-stock acquisition of Github in 2018 caused many developer to get feeling of dread, and I wager some business analyst to get excited at seeing Microsoft push further into the developer ecosystem *surpress thoughts of Balmer*.

I have been a fan of Github (hoestlund) but in all honesty, much like Strava I use it primarily more as a way to display what I've done instead of a tool to be used for managing work(outs). At work we use Jira but in my current project we unfortunately are not using BitBucket (which I loved in my first project for the ease of code reviews), but instead a horriblly outdated SCM that works (mostly) for hosting the project but does not provide any helpful tools for actual users (even file diffs are horrible to navigate and look at).

For this post I decided to take a look at what is available on the Github marketplace under the 'project management' category. In the current set up the only project management tools is that ticket references that are left in commit messages are automatically linked to the project. I have looked up metrics myself by taking a look at the total added and deleted LOC, the number of commits, and the number of files created/changed but as is clear, LOC is no indication of productivity.

So… what's in (the) store. There are a total of 688 results that are tagged with 'project management'. Strangely, when selecting view all, then you are taken to a similar overview page but with the additional tag of 'app', of which there are only 88 results. Picking the first three that grab my attention:

• Stale

  Stale was created by Github. It will apply a 'stale' label to an issue or pull request after a given period of inactivity. If no further activity occurs, then the issues is automatically closed.

  I can see the beneift of this on large open source projects (of which many are hosted on GitHub) but for my actual work it would only make sense with a similar Jira feature to look at issues that are placed in the backlog (as opposed to being shortlisted for the next 2/3 sprints) and do not have any tickets blocking them.

• Quantify

  Quantify was built by a third-party developer and is verified by Github. It allows users who are using GitHub as their source code tracker, along with Jira for project management, to do automatic time tracking, as oposed to manually starting and stopping the working time (or entering the time taken directly) into Jira.

  This is a tool which I would like to have as a project manager. Although I as a developer (and my project manager) have a general idea of how long a ticket took, but over time this knoweldge is lost. It would be interesting to see the variability in implementing a similar task and trying to identify the factors which cause delays in tickets.

• Inspektre

  Inspektre is a security measurement tool that inspects the project and displays the results of in terms of security goals: confidentiality, integrity, availability, access control, and authorization. The graphical overview allows for a quick overview of issues and what areas need to be improved. In addition to tools which also adress security such as Jenkins, I could see the benfit of having this integration through have a specialised glimpse into security issues.

I have several different newsletters that I subscribed to with my work email, however, in the last year I have been primarily working on a client system and only take a quick look once or twice a day in my main employer's email account, thereby neglecting the folders for not particularly important emails.

One of these email subscriptions is McKinsey Quarterly. One of the selected articles released in July is entitled "It’s time for leaders to get real about hybrid"which discusses the conflict arrising between bosses wanting their workforce to return to the office and their employees which have adjusted to the new way of working in times of the pandemic. This made me reflect again to my personal experience of remote work as well as how it fits in to my professional life as a software developer.

In terms of personal experience, I have only been in the office twice since March 2020: once to pick up a new laptop, and another time due to a technical issue. I am an avid proponent for remote work and, although briefly being able to sit in a room for just myself with all the equipment ready to go, do not want to return to working in the office any time soon.

My current project, which is in its 8 (or 12th) month depending on how you define the start, has, save for a meeting with some of the project team and two other consultants in Dortmund, been completely run at distance. With the recommendation from my company as well as the following legal restrictions meant that the 4 team members (including the PM) in Dortmund were also put in the position to not meet personally.

I haven't spoken to my project manager about how the developments have affected her role, but I assume that although it might have introduced some friction, it is not a major issue (myself and the other 3/4-ish of the team would not have been on site pandemic or not).

The team is aware of the others work habits and what times we are generally online, and we have a good overview of what the others are doing through Jira. In terms of ceremonies we have a daily, well, daily; a longer weekly which gives times to some larger issues, updates, and discussions; and a review followed by planning which occurs after each 3 week sprint. The schedule as well as the standing with other team members never makes me feel that I am lost in work, and my PM is happy.

I can see that when I was just starting in the workplace, or if I would work on smaller projects where there is a lot more crossover in tasks, that there would be a benefit in working together in an office. In my present day work though I do not see any issues from these points. Bosses argumenting for team morale clearly have not spoken to employees that are forced to go back (this is the case for three people that I know, no reaction has been positive).

I wonder where we'll be next summer!

/Oskar