Building Your Technology Skills Using Vocabulary and Buzzwords

When working with IT we often come across pieces of jargon that are overused and are in used inconsistently such that they develop an imprecise or unclear meaning. So today I’m gonna talk about a few buzzwords related to technology skills in today’s technological world, try and define them as best they can be defined, and in some cases, talk about some alternative ways to use words that have a more precise meaning.

The first buzzword we’ll talk about is cloud or the cloud

Cloud should not be used as a synonym for Internet. The cloud and the Internet are not exactly the same thing. Although cloud is somewhat vaguely defined, we typically think of a cloud as a virtualized environment, an environment where resources can be allocated dynamically based on what load needs to be processed. Similarly, from a business point of view, charges can also be dynamic.

The amount a customer pays can vary from month to month based on how much processing they used in that particular month. Not every system on the Internet has these capabilities, so therefore, cloud and Internet, not exactly the same thing. I try and avoid using the word cloud. It just seems to be a little too vague in most instances.

Next we’ll talk about Big Data Technology Skills

Big data is sometimes defined as data that’s so large that the typical tools and techniques used for processing data will no longer work, which sounds like a problem.

Yet most people when they talk about big data seem to be saying it’s a good thing. So some of the connotation there is a little vague. When we talk about big data, we don’t necessarily mean just a huge quantity of data. Data can be big based off of the volume, variety, or velocity. So the volume of data, in other words having a large quantity of data, can make it difficult to process. The variety of data can make it difficult to process.

So if we have text and images and sound clips and movie clips, all those things combined are more difficult to process than if we just had one of them. So variety is a challenge. And velocity. Velocity meaning how often the data changes. Obviously data that changes very frequently is more of a challenge to process. So rather than say big data, I prefer to discuss data in terms of volume, variety and velocity.

I like to be more specific rather than just saying big data. Also keep in mind that with data, quality is often more important than quantity. So a huge amount of inaccurate data is not very valuable. So big data is not always a good thing.

Next we’ll talk about Agile Technology Skills

Some people when they talk about an agile process or an agile project methodology, they seem to be saying something that can change quickly and react to the market.

Being able to change quickly is a good thing. Being able to react to the market is certainly necessary for modern businesses. However, I suspect some people are just too lazy to make a plan. If you are either unwilling or unable to make a plan, you could say that I don’t have a planbecause I am going to change quickly and react to the market. Also agile in terms of software development does have a fairly precise definition. A group of software developers published what they call the Agile Manifesto in 2001, laid out a pretty detailed philosophy of how to manage software development projects.

That methodology now known simply as Agile. It is a 12-point plan. I won’t get into all of the points, but there are a few of the points that I really like, that work very well in software development, but really work well in project management in general. Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential. I love this quote.

Some of the things I’m most proud of in my career are times when I’ve been able to simplify a complex process.

Projects are built around motivated individuals who should be trusted.

So this is the opposite of micromanagement. This encourages managers to give the power and tools to the team and allow them to come through. I’ve confidence that they will come through for you. The team reflects on how to become more effective and adjust accordingly. So periodically a team needs to get together and have an honest discussion about the good and the bad of the project thus far and how things could be better in the future.

This is the entire team, not just the top one or two people. All the way from the top to the bottom, very important to include the people that actually have their fingers on the keyboard. So I do like agile development and I do like agile methodologies being applied to other things. I just suspect that sometimes when people use the word agile they don’t fully understand that word has a very precise definition in software development.

The last buzzword we’ll talk about is security or secure

People sometimes say a system is secure. That is somewhat inaccurate because it is impossibleto be 100% secure. We can talk about different degrees of security. We can talk about increasing or decreasing the security of a system, but just to say a system is secure doesn’t quite make sense to me because it is impossible to be 100% secure. Also when we talk about security, many times people actually mean one of the subsets of security, such as encryption, authorization, or authentication.

If you actually want to talk about one of these things it would be better to use one of these words rather than security. I recently got off quite a confusing conference call where people were discussing the security of a system, discussing the security of some specific data. Some people insisting it was secure and other people insisting it was not secure. Eventually I realized the confusion was because some people were talking about authorization and authentication, and other people were talking about encryption.

The data in question, in fact, could only be accessed by going through two-factor authentication, and that’s why some people were saying, yes the data is highly secure. But the data, in fact, was not encrypted in any way. So that’s why other people were saying the data is not secure. Because of the vagueness of the word security, they were both right. People saying the data is secure were right and the people saying the data’s not secure were also rightbecause they were using two different definitions of the word secure.

So if you want to talk about encryption, use the word encryption, not security. If you want to talk about authorization and authentication, use those words rather than use the word security. It’ll hopefully save some confusion down the road.

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This concludes another week of Building Your Technology Skills. Thank you for joining me. Again if you have any ideas for topics, you can feel free to Tweet those to me using @zorayskhalid. Thank you and I hope to see you again next week.