Rethinking IT

Understanding uncertainty

Why uncertainty changes everything

Uwe Friedrichsen

13 minute read

Elephant sculpture (seen in front of the Natural History Museum Vienna)

After a few posts discussing some aspects of software architecture, I would like to continue with the probably most important concept that I see in the world (not only) of IT today: uncertainty.

The three waves of digital transformation

Digital transformation without the hype, smoke and mirrors

Uwe Friedrichsen

10 minute read

A quiet sea with swans swimming on it

“Digital transformation” is probably one of the most overstressed terms of the last years - not only in IT, but also everywhere else: in the news, the media, every conference, everywhere. You just cannot not escape it. But what makes it really annoying is that most people who talk about it do not seem to have any proper idea what it actually means.

Systems thinking and quality

Wise words from Russell Ackoff regarding systems thinking and quality improvement – and what we can learn from them

Uwe Friedrichsen

11 minute read

Steam locomotive with hull removed (to be seen in the Technical Museum Berlin)

A few days ago I rediscovered a short presentation that Dr. Russell Ackoff gave in 1994. The recording of this presentation was titled “If Russ Ackoff had given a TED talk…” on YouTube. The presentation is really short – just 12 minutes. But it contains a lot of wisdom, probably too much to understand it all at once.