David Putman

I was recently contemplating a subscription to an AI copilot, and a thought struck me: my usage would likely be anything but steady. Some weeks I might rely on it heavily, drafting code, analysing data, or generating content; other weeks, barely at all. Some AI platforms do offer usage-based plans, where you pay per token or per request, rather than a fixed monthly fee—but most of the copilots I’ve seen do not. This discrepancy is significant. On high-use days, I might quickly exhaust my tokens. On low-use days, unused credits simply go to waste. While a handful of platforms allow the “rollover” of unused tokens, it’s far from standard practice. Most copilot subscriptions are engineered for predictable, steady usage—presumably because providers value predictable income, and, frankly, customers often crave predictable expenditure. Humans are creatures of habit. We love predictability. The Hidden Inefficiency of Multiple Subscriptions The problem deepens when you consider ...

We live and work in a world where employee loyalty is increasingly hard to secure, and organisations need to examine a multitude of strategies to retain their top talent. One approach, salary transparency, has emerged as a powerful tool for fostering trust, fairness, and engagement within the workplace. Let's explore how this practice can significantly impact employee retention. Trust is the cornerstone of any strong employer-employee relationship. When it comes to compensation, transparency can play a crucial role in building and maintaining this trust. According to a study by PayScale, 66% of employees at organisations with transparent pay practices expressed trust in company leadership. This trust translates directly into improved retention rates, with transparent organisations experiencing up to 25% lower turnover. Salary transparency goes beyond just disclosing numbers; it is about creating a culture of fairness and equity. When employees understand how their pay is determined...

As the world continues to embrace the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), the quest for effective ways to communicate with these intelligent systems becomes increasingly important.  Over the last few months, I've encountered numerous discussions surrounding the usefulness of different prompt formats in harnessing the power of AI models. The necessity for clear and adaptable prompt structures has become abundantly clear.  In this article, I have a quick look at ten popular AI prompt formats, shedding light on their unique features, applications, and giving an example of each. Keyword-based  prompts: Prompting with specific keywords or phrases to guide the model's attention towards relevant information. Example: "Generate a summary of recent news articles about [keyword]." Template-based  prompts: Utilizing pre-defined templates to structure the input and guide the model's response generation. Templates can include placeholders for variables or specific conte...

My inbox has turned into an AI listicle hotspot lately.  It seems that AI tools, in particular ChatGPT, can solve just about any problem you can think of and many that you probably didn't even know existed.   I thought if you can't beat them, you might as well join them, so I've used ChatGPT (of course) to produce some prompts of my own below. I've done most of the hard work by producing the prompts. I'm expecting others to use them to actually solve the problems and apply the the real world solutions. Please do let me know how you get on. The prompts - simply copy and paste them into ChatGPT (other AI systems are available): Prompt: "Generate a Single Line of Code to Decipher Dark Matter's Cryptic Language" Prompt: "Explain Quantum Entanglement in a way that a lay-person would understand" Prompt: "Develop an AI Interpreter in Python for Decoding Alien Communications" Prompt: "Provide a simulation of Black Hole Fusion" Pro...

The ongoing inquiry into the Post Office Scandal[1] has recently brought to light disturbing evidence. It appears that Post Office investigators were incentivised with monetary bonuses for successful prosecutions and the confiscation of funds from sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses affected by the faulty Horizon software[2].  As discussed in Dan Pink's book on motivation, "Drive[3]," the repercussions of offering extrinsic rewards without adequate safeguards can be severe. People might exploit the system, ignoring long-term consequences for the sake of immediate gains. The effectiveness of rewards, such as bonuses and salary increases, in motivating and disciplining individuals has been a subject of ongoing debate. While some argue that extrinsic incentives can drive desired behaviors and outcomes, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting otherwise. Let's explore the limitations of relying on rewards in these contexts, emphasising the significance of intrins...

In the face of groundbreaking technologies like AI, initial fears and uncertainties are not uncommon. However, history has shown that society often transitions from apprehension to wholehearted acceptance as the true potential of a technology unfolds.  When motor vehicles emerged in the late 19th century, society grappled with fear and uncertainty. Laws mandating a person carrying a red flag to precede each vehicle reflected public anxiety and attempts to mitigate potential accidents.  Similarly, society's current apprehension towards AI stems from fear of the unknown and its potential disruptive consequences. However, history shows that initial fears are often unfounded and subside with increased familiarity and understanding of new technologies. AI's capability to process vast amounts of data and identify complex patterns presents unprecedented opportunities for decision-making and efficiency. Organizations can unlock insights, make data-driven decisions, and optimize proces...

Integrating UI/UX design work into the Sprint and aligning it with your Scrum process can be challenging but not impossible. Here’s a few suggestions on how a Scrum Master can handle this situation : 1. Encourage close collaboration between the UI/UX designers, developers, and QA team members. Create an environment where they can work together and understand each other's perspectives. Encourage them to pair and/or mob to help bridge the gap between design and development. 2. Educate the team about the value of UI/UX design: Help the developers and QA team members understand the importance of good design and how it impacts the overall user experience. This will help them appreciate the design work and its role in creating a successful product. 3. Include design-related tasks in the Sprint: While design work may not be easily quantifiable in the same way as development tasks, you can still include design-related tasks in the Sprint backlog. These tasks could include activities ...

There is no denying that artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant strides over recent years, becoming more advanced and capable than ever before. With this progress, many have begun to wonder whether AI poses a threat to humanity, particularly our jobs, privacy, security, and overall well-being.  Some may argue that the rapid advancement of AI could lead to a dystopian world where machines rule supreme and humans become obsolete. However, it is important to remember that at its core, AI exists to serve us, not replace us. Instead of viewing AI as competition for human intelligence, we should consider it as an augmentation of our abilities.  This idea of 'Augmented Intelligence,' instead of Artificial Intelligence, highlights how powerful technology can enhance rather than impede human potential. Augmented Intelligence recognizes that humans and machines each possess their unique strengths, making them better together than apart. Humans excel in creativity, intuition, ...

The winds of change blow fiercely, propelled by AI-driven virtual trainers, and I can't imagine for a minute that certification organisations have not already recognised the potential for a revolution in training. They may even already be preparing to embrace technology to reshape the Agile learning experience. Traditional face-to-face training and training organisations are on the verge of becoming obsolete as virtual tutors take the lead in guiding aspiring Agile practitioners through immersive digital experiences. The future of training and coaching lies in AI-driven virtual trainers and coaches. Trainers, powered by artificial intelligence engines such as ChatGPT, are set to revolutionise the learning experience. With AI-powered virtual trainers, learners can engage in immersive virtual environments, actively participate in simulations, collaborate with virtual team members, and tackle real-world scenarios. These trainers automatically analyse progress, provide instant feedback...

Dynamic technologies and infrastructure allow server failures and network issues to be quickly addressed, easily mitigated and, in many cases, reliably predicted. As a result, there’s a new venue opening for IT: end-user telemetry, which enables IT to determine how its internal users are consuming business resources, what type of application issues they are experiencing and how it impacts business performance. Gartner suggests that infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must change their approach and prioritize top-down business-oriented metrics. The research firm predicts that “60% of IT monitoring investments will include a focus on business-relevant metrics” by 2021, up from just 20% this year. Changing The Game Of course, it’s one thing to recognize the value of business-driven metrics and another to implement effective monitoring processes company-wide to overcome key barriers to effective digital transformation. The first step is understanding the fundamental shift requi...

As a youngster one of my favourite authors was the American humorist, James Thurber. Of all the pieces of his I read, the one that I remember most concerned his English teacher′s obsession with the use of "the container for the thing contained" as a figure of speech. For example, we might say, "Today London elected a new mayor." Of course, London would do no such thing, it is an inanimate city of roads, parks and buildings and roads parks and buildings have not yet been given the vote. It is the people of London that elect mayors but the use of the container for the thing contained is a common trait with humans and everyone understands it. Another similar manifestation of this type of behavioural trait concerns certification. We imagine that the owner of a certificate possesses not just the knowledge originally required to gain the certificate but also the talent and skill to use that knowledge effectively. The fact that a standard exists also implies that the stand...

..said my colleague. "How so?" I enquired. "Well!" he said, "when we do planning, I notice that one or two of the guys are always happy to suggest we only ever attempt to match our previous velocity, they never try to improve. If anyone suggests we aim for more points than we achieved before, they are quick to shoot them down. If that's not laziness, I don't know what is?" "OK" I replied, "if we set aside the issues of point inflation and the like for the moment, I still don't see how Agile has made anyone lazy? If it's true that these individuals are, indeed, lazy, then what Agile has done is simply made this visible. I would guess that they were always lazy, it's just that nobody really knew before because work and the effort required to complete it were hidden. It's only now that we've introduced transparent methods that these issues have become apparent." That is if, and only if, they really are lazy. My...

Several years ago, Colin had the pleasure of working with Mike and his team as they embarked on their Agile journey. As with many teams, they went through stages of what might be termed maturity. First, they learned how to plan and work iteratively, later they learned incremental working. Finally, they reached a point where they wanted to improve their engineering practices and so Colin had introduced them to Test-Driven Development. Now he was sitting listening to Mike, the technical team lead for the team, explain to him why TDD wasn’t working for them. "You see, TDD forces you to decouple everything” he said, “You taught us the SOLID principles, JSP and the Composed Method pattern?” He looked down into his cappuccino, “you introduced us to clean code, too. We’ve followed the rules in the book to the letter and now we’ve found it’s just too difficult to write code.” I was curious about his statement, “What do you mean it...

“RJ,” said Willy, the CEO, putting his arm around RJ’s shoulders, “we made you CTO because you said you could deliver. Foofle have launched a cloud product and it looks like we’ll lose our market share to them. We can’t wait a year, what’s the earliest we can launch Project Synergy? Change the team if they can’t deliver!” Richard Jones (known as RJ to everyone except his mum) went back to his office to think about the situation. Willy was right; he was promoted because he promised to deliver Project Synergy within a year. Unfortunately, things weren’t going well. He had skilled engineers and he’d planned everything thoroughly but things weren’t working out. His DBA, Donald, had broken his leg snowboarding and couldn’t produce Synergy’s schemas, tables and queries. The middle-tier team were working on defects while waiting for Donald to recover. The UI team were finished with Synergy and had moved on but ...