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The Fractional CTO

Proven Leadership for Today's Demanding Technology Environment

Proven Leadership for Today's Demanding Technology Environment

Experience to help you manage today's complex technology landscape.

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Three Reasons You Should Care About RPA

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Robotic Process Automation - RPA

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a popular topic and emerging buzzword “darling”. In spite of that, it deserves discussion. Move over micro-services, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. RPA needs some room on the overcrowded buzzword couch.

Every buzzword has its application. It’s the bandwagon of ubiquity that’s dangerous. Use things where they’re appropriate in an architecture. But, if you’re more interested in using buzzwords to gain attention or investors, please move along. For those that want to learn an approach to achieve near-term value from RPA, read on…

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What Are the Five Best Times to Hire a Fractional CTO or CISO?

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Fractional CTO services are ideal for businesses that don’t need a full-time executive. By hiring a fractional CTO, a business gets the same expertise more quickly and at a lower cost than a full-time hire.

If you’re wondering why — and when — to hire a fractional CTO, here are five times that deserve consideration:

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The Most Impactful Advantages of NiFi Development

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In my previous post on NiFi, I mentioned the differences between flow-based programming and other models. This post will help bridge the gap for those new to the flow based model and NiFi Development. 

What is flow-based programming?

NiFi Development Flow
NiFi Development flow
Source: Wikipedia

In brief, flow-based programming (FBP) is a development approach where a series of processes send messages (data) along one or more configurable paths.

Think of it like as a bunch of processes that read input and provide output to a message bus. The processes don’t need to know anything about where the message came from or who is going to consume it next. They only need to perform their function and send the result to a pre-determined spot.

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NiFi: Three Great Reasons it Should be in Your Tech Toolkit

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NiFi flow-based programming

NiFi, or Niagara Files, is a flow-based programming solution developed by the NSA. It was open sourced in 2014 and is commercially supported. More than an ETL solution, it has the power to transform the way your business processes and consumes data.

I’ll skip the backgrounder on NiFi and flow-based programming, and get right to the point.

Reason #1: Let NiFi do some Heavy Lifting before the data hits the database

Using stored procedures to translate and process data is a common approach. At scale, it’s one of the more costly ETL methods. Why? Because storing processing logic in a database requires the entire database to scale. Including the licenses.
Among other things, NiFi can:

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Ignore These Risks at the Peril of Poor Project Estimation

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One of the most difficult things to do in the tech world is provide a high level of accuracy in the project estimation process. In this post, I’ll explore 5 areas that are often overlooked. I’ll also introduce a Risk Assessment Tool that I’ve used to help me better manage things.

Estimating is Difficult

Less experienced developers tend to look at the surface of a task and produce low estimates. They tend not to have the knowledge of which questions to ask to get to the details. They could be trying to prove themselves, many times by being the fastest.

More experienced developers have been through the pitfalls for software development. They know that things won’t work as planned. That stakeholders will change their mind. And that they will get something wrong. Project estimation in this case tends to be on the higher side to account for everything they have learned may go wrong.

Let’s face it. Estimating a human endeavor is tough work. And it requires an efficient feedback loop to get better at the process.

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How to Get the Best Offshore Results

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How to get the best offshore results

In his 2005 Book, The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman sums it up pretty well. “There is just a job, and in more cases than ever before it will go to the best, smartest, most productive, or cheapest worker—wherever he or she resides.”

My first experience with offshore teams was well before that. Albeit not the best experience, it got better as we figured out how to work together. As distant economies bring the best and brightest online, the world is flatter. To succeed you need to make it a smaller world, too.

To best manage these challenges and get the best offshore results, follow three basic principles .

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