Does data quality matter?

I bought an older showjumping horse this spring and got the passport when I took over him.

If you compete in riding in Sweden, you and your horse need to be registered in TDB, i.e. ”Tävlingsdatabasen”. The identity of the horse is the passport and also chip for younger horses.

You can register someone else horse, but you need to show the horse passport at the  arena before allowed to complete. Thus catching any errors or fraudulent behavior.

I didn’t register my newly bought horse until I was to compete, so the data in the system TDB was not up to date for a couple of weeks.

But the are more registers. If you have a pure breed horse, it’s in a stud book. Carayllio is a Swedish Warm Blood, so you can find his data on-line in BLUP.

However, the data there says his is a stallion and the the owner is the breeder. Nobody have updated that registration for near twenty years. His is a gelding now, and have changed ownership several times during the years.

The question is when data quality matters.

For competion, you must have correct data. For breeding, yes you will update the stud book. But who cares otherwise?

The answer is Jordbruksverket who have register of all horse and where they live. But that responsibility lies with the owner of the stable, not the horse owner.

IT is always behind

Brintha wrote about if business or IT is behind on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-business-ready-ten-years-behind-brintha-shanmugalingam-rmhqf

In my view, IT is always behind, this is why we have shadow IT.

Every Excel-file used by businesses is a proof of this. Every manual copy of data between systems. Every manual correction of data in a system is due to IT is behind business. Every privat smartphone running apps not available at work is due to IT a step behind.

The question is not if IT is behind, the real problem for business is when it’s falling even more behind.

Wrong question

Solution architects often focus solely on the tool, the platform or technique.

Nobody asks what Adrienne's thread was made of.

Linen? Hemp? Wool? Perhaps. But that's the wrong question.

The real problem was not to kill Minotauros. It was how to get out of the labyrinth at Knossos, alive. She solved the problem and is still remembered. Not the manufacturer of the thread.

Finding out how to solve the real problem is more important than finding a tool.

Do I need a certification?

For a while, there have been a huge focus on certifications from different vendors, but are they really needed?

For me personally, it’s questionable.

I didn’t get certified in Linux in 1987. Instead I bought a thick book about how to design an operating system, and read it several times. Inter-process communication and dead-locks are still tricky subjects.

I didn’t get a certificate for world wide web in 1989 when I was implementing hypertext at work for system documentation in a production plant.

Neither any certification when I created my first CGI-scripts i C for httpd before Apache was released.

I missed to take ”Datakörkortet” in Sweden, as I was to busy with architecture for a digital music platform in 2000.

For me, when there are certifications in a topic, it’s already mainstream and I’m at the next wave.

One exception to the rule. I was TOGAF certified in 2011, but I’ve been working as an Enterprise Architect since last millennium.

Difficult to create AI-agents?

Agentic AI is the best since sliced bread. The question is then, is it difficult to create AI-agents for production? Not a PoC or pilots.

As usually the architect answer is, how long is a string?

My background is as a programmer, a programmer writing software programs to be precise. (Wording matters). I begun professional software development in 1986 but haven’t written production code this millennium.

So for me writing AI-agents doesn’t seem too difficult when you know which problem to solve, how to break down into manageable chunks and manage error handling. Then automated tests and ownership for operations & maintenance.

Your mileage may vary depending on your background.