
Weekly Reads, 8/4/2022
An article from protocol on “Why AI and machine learning are drifting away from the cloud” caught my eye this week. We always advise companies to use on-prem equipment for training AI models because it can be incredibly expensive to do it in the cloud. It...

Weekly Reads, 7/25/2022
Everybody loves a good story on life saving applications of AI. The WSJ article on “How Hospitals Are Using AI to Save Lives” is an example. If hospitals can identify patients that are at a higher risk of a Code Blue emergency before it happens, then lives could be...

Friday Weekly Reads, 7/15/2022
The weekend is almost here! My weekly look at the Ethereum upgrade to the Merge (including the impact to Ethereum mining) and where AI still falls short - that includes autonomous vehicles and other time critical safety functions. The Fast Company article...

Hourly rate or total cost
Be sure to check out my latest SphereOI blog, Hourly rate or total cost, on what I found completely missing in online advice for IT outsourcing. I can’t help but wonder if the content out there is simply repeating what C-suite executives want to hear. Companies...

Weekly Reads, 06/29/2022
Return on investment (ROI) is often the cornerstone of C-level decision making. But even as businesses embrace AI and spending is on the rise, a high ROI is not guaranteed. Making the business case for AI is challenging where the VentureBeat article titled “The...

Origins of Product Owner vs. Product Manager nonsense
I have worked with dozens of customers who insist on adding a Product Manager to the team even though they already have a Product Owner. I have never seen this work well. Let’s start by explaining the difference between the Product Owner and Product...

Weekly Reads, 06/15/2022
Federated learning is a technique where machine learning algorithms are trained using data that never leaves the end-users' device or server where it lives. Given that I had several customers specifically request federated learning in the last few weeks, I can see...
Weekly Reads, 06/08/2022
Focus on tech instead of employees. That is mistake #1 in the first article on cybersecurity in my reading list below. When managers believe cybersecurity is mostly a technological problem that can be quickly fixed with a product, it ignores the people issues that...

Weekly Reads, 06/01/2022
I had lunch with a senior IT executive of a Fortune 500 company who I had the privilege of working with on past software development projects. He said the #1 challenge he faced was speed. That is a tall order for any large company that has established...

Christopher Alexander: More to his ideas than most understood
In October 1996, I was in San Jose, California attending the Object-Oriented Programs, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) conference when I first learned of Christopher Alexander. When Jim Coplien introduced Professor Alexander as a speaker, he...

Theresa Smith
Theresa Smith is a Senior Partner and Technology Delivery Lead for SphereOI who works with commercial and federal government clients to define and deliver enterprise technology that drives successful change for digital experience, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, cloud, customer experience, digital transformation, and blockchain. Theresa has extensive practical experience with enterprise projects and operational issues, where she consults, advises, and shapes the delivery of services for her clients. Theresa is particularly well known for skills in client engagement, satisfaction, and retention where she combines that with a solid software engineering background to deliver what is most valuable to the client.