Who Created The Pragmatic Family of Frameworks?
A simple man.
My career began at the age of 16 in 1978 as an Electrical
and Electronic Apprentice with Marconi Radar Systems (Blackbird Road,
Leicester, UK) At that time I was really into electronics and had been playing
with little circuits for a few years. It was really exciting. I spent my time
between college and “The Factory” where I got the chance to work in many
different departments. It was really exciting. Around 1980 I ended up in a
Department (New Parks, Leicester UK) called TEPIGEN (TElevision
PIcture GENerator)
who had built the visual system for a ship simulator. Six million Pounds of
custom built hardware (that had less processing power than the CPU in the phone
that’s in your pocket) consisting mainly of four racks of “Picture Processors”
(Motorola 68000s) driven by a PDP11. It was really exciting. The output was on
three channels each delivering 40 degrees field of view which drove three large
Barco projectors. Interestingly at one point there were black speckles that
kept appearing on the displays, moving about in random patterns and appearing
and disappearing in the same apparently random fashion. After months of
software and hardware investigation the problem was identified. It was a test
Radar across the apron from where our Portacabins where located that was
spraying us periodically with microwaves! It was really exciting.
I began my time there hand entering the data which described
the terrain and buildings and which fed the picture processors, and wrote my
first program in DEC BASIC. Over the next four years or so my programming
skills grew, and I moved from BASIC to FORTRAN and then to PASCAL. It was
really exciting. The ship simulator turned into a flight simulator which meant
it was the biggest video game in the world. It was really exciting. So much so
that I would work late into the night (sometimes 48 hours at a stretch) and go
into work on Saturdays or Sundays. Right from the beginning it wasn’t so much
the code I wrote that I got excited about it was more HOW I wrote the code that
interested me. I would often spend hours writing a program and finally get it
working, only to tear it to pieces and rewrite it in a new and elegant way,
often with more features, less code and more opportunity to reuse things later.
It was really exciting. Even at that time I spent more time throwing things
away than I spent creating things. I believe this is where progress comes from.
Sounds totally counter-intuitive I know, but most things of value are
counter-intuitive!
Around 1986 the plug was pulled on TEPIGEN and I moved to
another department (Fleet, Hampshire, UK) who produced a system called TELEVIEW
(an improvement on Teletext and a forerunner of “The Web”) for Singapore’s
Telecom Company (SingTel). I had moved on to C as a programming language. The
most elegant and powerful language I have ever used. It took me a while to
understand it but after reading the perfect “The C Programming Language”
(Kernighan and Ritchie) the penny dropped. It was really exciting.
A brief spell at SD Scicon (1989-1991) was followed by three
years working for Deutsche Bank (Singapore) where I found the best food in the
world and where my architectural tendencies came to the fore. It was really
exciting. While there I created and sold a numerical analysis package for
lottery numbers called Mega4D. Returning in 1994 I spent six years working for
Eurobase Systems (Chelmsford, UK) doing Application Architecture and creating
Architectural and programming frameworks.
From 2000 to 2011 I spent my time working for various
Enterprises as a contractor. While interesting, it wasn’t very exciting, but
all the time, whatever domain I worked in I was always interested in improving
it. Each time this met a limit and the limit was always as a consequence of
things being done less than effectively and less than efficiently in the
preceding step. Hence my roles moved from Application Architecture, Data
Architecture and Technology Architecture into Technical Architecture (a bit of
a misnomer!) then Solution Architecture then Enterprise Architecture and finally
the entire Transformation domain.
Since 2011 I have devoted my time to Pragmatic. It is really exciting.
Whilst I have never been an academic person, and never went
to university (I have always preferred to “go out and do stuff”) I have
recognised over the last year that Psychology plays such a vital role in
Enterprise Transformation (for good or bad) and so in February 2014 I began a
BSc (Honours) Psychology degree with The Open University. It is really
exciting.
MBTI
My MBTI is INTJ with a hallmark of
Vision and categorised as Independent, Individualistic
and Visionary.
INTJs tend to be independent-minded, theoretical, and
original. They have great drive for their own ideas and purposes. They are
sceptical, critical, determined, and sometimes stubborn. In areas of expertise,
they will develop systems to organize and carry through a project with or
without help.
INTJs are typically innovators in their fields. They trust
their inner vision of how things fit together and relentlessly move their ideas
to action. They would rather spend time on what they believe is important than
on what’s popular with others.
INTJs are independent and individualistic, and others may
see them as stubborn at times. They move ahead with or without the support of
others, and they have a single-minded concentration.
They like using logic to solve complex, challenging
problems. Routine, everyday tasks bore them. They analyse and attempt to fit
pieces together into a coherent whole.
Although INTJs are usually organized and follow through,
they may sometimes ignore details that do not fit with their vision of the
future. If these details are important, their ideas may not work as well as
they would like.
INTJs are likely to be most satisfied in a work environment
that values their insights and ideas and lets them work independently. People
can count on them for their vision and innovative solutions to problems in
their field.
Some famous INTJ’s:
¨
Isaac Newton (Physicist) -
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of
people."
¨
Karl Marx - (Philosopher) -
"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is to change it."
¨
Augustus (Emperor of Rome) -
"I found Rome brick and left it marble."
¨
Isaac Asimov (Science fiction
writer and science writer) - "Those people who think they know everything
are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
¨
Martin Luther (Theologian and
Protestant reformer) - "I [am] slave to the authority of no one."
¨
Nikola Tesla (Inventor) -
"My ideas have revolutionized the industries of the United States."
¨
Stephen Hawking (Physicist) -
"My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe."
DISC
My DISC Profile is 7414 and categorised as Result-Oriented.
Result-Oriented people display self-confidence, which some
may interpret as arrogance. They actively seek opportunities that test and
develop their abilities to accomplish results. Result-Oriented persons like
difficult tasks, competitive situations, unique assignments, and
"important" positions. They undertake responsibilities with an air of
self-importance and display self-satisfaction once they have finished.
Result-Oriented people tend to avoid constraining factors
such as direct controls, time-consuming details, and routine work. Because they
are forceful and direct, they may have difficulties with others.
Result-Oriented people prize their independence and may become restless where
involved with group activities or committee work. Although Result-Oriented
people generally prefer to work alone, they may persuade others to support
their efforts especially when completing routine activities.
Result-Oriented people are quick-thinkers, and they are
impatient and fault-finding with those who are not They evaluate others on
their ability to get results. Result Oriented people are determined and
persistent even in the face of antagonism. They take command of the situation
when necessary, whether or not they are in charge. In their uncompromising
drive for results, they may appear blunt and uncaring.
So putting MBTI and DISC together it says that I am a Result-Oriented Independent Individualistic Visionary.
Well that about sums me up to a tee. Sounds very grand, but of course, there are
always downsides. I am also an Arrogant, Inflexible, Argumentative, Intolerant,
Impatient, Critical & Stubborn, Pessimistic Optimist!
Different people have different profiles, and different
profiles fit into different roles in different ways. We all kind of know this
but do we ever take it into account?
