IT and Management
What is IT?
IT and Business Strategy
--Drafts of the following documents at the time of preparation--
I usually speak to software engineers and information technology college students, but this time, since I'm in management, I'll start by talking about IT.
What is IT?
IT: Information Technology
Dealing with information
Computer use technology" in effect because computers are much better at it than humans are at handling it.
A computer is something that computes, and computer science is called computer science in Japanese.
A major step in the history of computing
1952 IBM 701 announced.
1071 vacuum tubes
Monthly rental fee of approximately $10,000 to $20,000
You know what happened to IBM after that.
1957 FORTRAN announced
FORmula TRANslation system
The first "programming language" used by almost all modern programmers
Instructions on what to have the calculator calculate are the "program.
The "calculator" as a physical object and the "program" as insubstantial information
Before the split, wires were wired to describe the calculations.
The former is called "hardware" and the latter "software.
In the modern era, programming means to create a program using a tool called a "programming language" (= this itself is a program).
The software engineer's job is to
Figure out what the computer can do,
Think about what you want the computer to do to create customer value,
It is then compiled into instructional information in a form that can be understood by a computer.
Design to create value more efficiently.
Company management is
Figure out what each employee can do,
Think about what you want your employees to do to create customer value,
Put it into instructions in a form that employees can understand.
Design to create value more efficiently.
Roughly the same.
Easy part, difficult part
Computers do not have emotions, so there is no need to take motivation into account. They don't get sick of their work and quit.
Computers cannot guess, so detailed instructions must be given.
It is tedious to give detailed instructions!
Need to verbalize what it is that you want us to do
Especially in the case of outsourcing, etc., the "customer" who has something they want the computer to do and the "programmer" who instructs the computer to do it are two different people, so we need to do our best to verbalize what we want it to do.
Programming languages have therefore been developed to facilitate giving instructions
Upper left FORTRAN
Hello! in C
code:C
main()
{
printf("Hello!\n");
}
Python for Hello!
code:python
print("Hello!")
This is a poster made in 2004
What has happened in the last 10 years?
Objective-C has long been used to create programs on Apple products
Swift Release
ObjC was released in 1984
Swift was released in 2014
Death of Flash/ActionScript
iPhone decides not to carry Flash
HTML5/JavaScript breakthrough
YouTube was founded in 2005 and became famous for video playback using Flash
In 2007, Apple releases the iPhone. However, Flash was not available on the iPhone.
Adobe declared that they will discontinue support for Flash in 2020 (in July of 2017. That's awfully recent!)
Visual Studio 2005 Express Microsoft offers programming language free of charge
Programming language sales market scorched.
Python's market share has expanded dramatically due to the boom in machine learning and artificial intelligence
https://gyazo.com/88343f390f12b36c48cf70fe28f2047b
Excel Python
At this time, it is still possible to use Python to manipulate Excel. Also supported by Pandas, a well-known data analysis library.
Special Manufacturing
Using language (programming language) as a tool to create things
The word itself is the object of creation.
That language changes depending on external factors.
Douglas Engelbart
intelligence enhancement
Create a concept
Assignments, functions, recursive definitions, modules, classes, traits
character string
Concept of Variables
It's just a series of zeros and ones in memory.
Read and write by specifying the number
It's hard on people.
We made it possible to give it an easy-to-understand "name".
x = 1 to write to the address in memory associated with the name x
Function Concepts
Enable reusability by giving easy-to-understand names to parts of the code that are used repeatedly
Major difference from physical manufacturing
In physical manufacturing, if 100 units of a certain component (e.g., a water tap) are used, the cost of 100 units will be incurred.
In information space manufacturing, even if a function is used in 100 locations, the cost of creating the function itself is constant.
Strong incentives to make reusable parts
Of course, a design that is divided into parts will have overhead at the joints of the parts, which will reduce global performance. It is the same as physical manufacturing. #Modular and Integral But Moore's law
Technology Supporting Coding
https://gyazo.com/576f6977667de721f0a9a0165f5c10e5
The book was published in April 2013 and is still often mentioned positively on social networking sites
CUI and GUI
Graphical User Interface
It was easy for the average person to catch on.
Like communicating by gestures of pointing at things.
With the advent of voice user interfaces, "verbal instructions" spread to the general public.
The effect of the easier process is to widen the gateway to the market.
The same way that the need for memory management has increased the number of programmers by eliminating the need for memory management.
Will I lose my job?
Gone is the job of piecing together the wires.
The demand for programmers in the current sense may decrease, but instead there will be more "something programming" that more people take for granted.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Programming education in compulsory education
Mastery of Programmatic Thinking
What is Agile Development?
The speed of change in IT and the low "cost of redesign" due to the fact that it was information and not physical objects made it a good fit with agile development, which emphasizes speed of learning.
Explanation of what Agile is
First of all, the term business strategy has many meanings, strategy safari.
There are two schools of thought.
It is important to learn effectively from the environment and adapt to change."
It is important to analyze your company's strengths and weaknesses and formulate strategies accordingly."
By comparing the two ideas, we can see what is not written.
When one says, "It is important to formulate a strategy based on a thorough analysis of your company's strengths and weaknesses," there is an implicit assumption that strategy formulation is done in advance and then it is implemented. It is missing the perspective of what to do if you realize the mistakes in your strategy during the implementation phase, and how to learn from the environment.
Conversely, when one says, "It is important to learn effectively from the environment and adapt to change," there is an implicit assumption that the environment is subject to change and that it is inevitable to take time to develop strategies in advance. This means that prior strategy formulation is being disregarded.
Neither is the right answer.
The author feels very close to the idea of learning schools. This is because I feel that it is very important to learn from the environment and adapt to change, not only in the management of a company, but also in the "self-management" of an individual engineer.
Some of you may associate the term "agile" with the idea of "designing a specification well in advance and then implementing it. Although the definition of the word "agile" is not very clear, it can be said that it is a development style in which the client is provided with the product quickly, and the specifications are changed based on the results of the customer's experience. The relationship between these two development styles is similar to the relationship between design schools and learning schools described above. Learning efficiently" is the goal of agile development.
Management books often referenced and referred to in the IT industry
Startup Management Theory
Proceed with spending limited money.
Before money runs out, you have to find "customers" who will pay you for what you create.
The idea that "if we make this kind of product, it will sell" and the hypothesis that "there are customers who will pay for it."
Hypotheses must be tested.
We need to verify this as soon as possible, and if it doesn't look right, we need to change our policy.
If you spend all the money you have to make version 1 of your product and there are no customers for it, you will go bankrupt.
Despite differences in detailed constraints, Lean concepts can be applied to a wide range of areas
The Era of Parallel Careers
Prime Minister's Office Workplace Reform
Revision of the MHLW Model Employment Contract
Federation of Economic Organizations (Organisation)
To all the graduate students now, in your parents' time, it was common to work for only one organization, with no side jobs allowed.
The image of "job hunting" after graduating from college, joining a large company, and working there until retirement.
Drucker's Parallel Career
Year 2020
Japan
Large companies: companies that do not go out of business
Longer life than humans in Japan
Company born before the development of IT technology
Pressure to create something new
Need to obtain knowledge from outside the organization
open innovation
Man as a Vehicle of Knowledge
Where knowledge is stored, it can be electronic.
The ability to observe a situation, isolate key features, and then retrieve "written knowledge" that can be applied to the situation.
Where we create "new bonds."
Some people say things like, "Computers can't do that," but I disagree.
All I can say is, "Where computers can do it, they will do it quickly and it will not lead to competitive advantage."
It is slightly outside the boundaries that creates competitive advantage
physical aggregate
Location dispersion
Time Asynchronous
Scrapbox
Masui Lab.
University = place where most people are gone in 4 years = 25% turnover
Venn diagram, overlap
communication cost
How is a common vocabulary acquired?
As a member of a community
collaboration
Communication difficulties
Different organizations have different objectives.
Prisoner's dilemma, optimizing each other individually and then falling into a solution that is not the overall optimum.
A solution to the prisoner's dilemma, introducing an observer
Factors contributing to the formation of this network structure
Networking system for projects conducted by IPA
College is a promising option
Networking with people who will be in different positions after graduation
For companies, maintaining relationships with retirees and parallel work
---
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/ITと経営. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I'm very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.