Have you ever been in a conversation that you feel at best is just a waste of time; at worst, that the other person does not care? Have you been the messenger in some of them, the recipient in another? We’ve all been there; at times with family, with friends, at work. When at work, has this ever happened to you in a group meeting, at a one-on-one; when giving or receiving feedback?   Photo by Christina Morillo via Pexels   I knew the type of manager I wanted to be from the start of my mentorship. As I continued to navigate the waters, it became increasingly clear that the path I had chosen was appropriate, and therefore, the type of future colleagues I wanted to be surrounded by, and the type of mentors I wanted to continue seeking guidance from.  For me, the path has always been of being a leader over a manager. I believe I can attribute that, first and foremost, to my family’s values and  principles, and the way my parents raised us. Secondly, my path in the ...

Tech is evolving faster than ever in this AI era, that it feels every week there is something new to talk about, and what you learn weeks back is no longer relevant, or “that AI tools” already has gone through changes that you need to catch up with in order to stay relevant.  Fear not, embrace the challenges and learnings, and find applications for it that are good and ethical for this present, and the hereafter.  The new “craze” is AI agents, and for good reason!  Image generated with NightCafe In contrast with AI chatbots, an AI agent can execute tasks on your behalf. If you are thinking “ that this could be agents that we leave running independently for many days for a group of deliveries ”… Well then you are correct! Are there risks? Should we talk about trust and accountability? The answer for both is yes. I already hinted at it a couple of paragraphs above, when I wrote “ good and ethical ”. AI (Artificial Intelligence) agents are software that work autonomously,...

Companies are in need of the metrics that will allow them to stay in business by making sure they meet the expectations of their customers. The name of the game is higher customer satisfaction by winning their trust and loyalty. To do so, you want to provide good products and services. Therefore you need to find ways to monitor performance, drive continuous improvements and deliver the quality expected by the consumer in this highly competitive market. Photos from AlphaTradeZone via Pexel and Spacejoy via Unsplash SLAs, SLOs and SLIs are a good way to achieve the above. They allow clients and vendors to be on the same page when it comes to expected system performance. If we go one level deeper, vendors/providers work on NFRs (Non-Functional Requirements) when working on their solutions. NFRs define the quality attributes of a system. I bring them up because the relationship between them and the SLAs is that they provide, in a way, foundational aspects for the SLA-SLO-SL...

 Conflicts are a part of our daily lives and are often unavoidable at work. Therefore, it's essential to have the tools to effectively manage conflicts and leverage them to our advantage - to spur new ideas, challenge and strengthen our beliefs, and evolve our perspectives when necessary. However, conflicts often trigger our fight-or-flight response and can cause chronic stress and mental fatigue and diminish our productivity. Having the right tools can help us face conflicts confidently.  AI Generated with Microsoft Copilot + Designer by Beolle   Recently, I took a course from Harvard ManageMentor® * to enhance my conflict resolution skills. I summarized the key takeaways from the course in the framework below to help you better prepare for resolving conflicts. The framework consists of six (6) parts Identify the type of conflict   Identify your own and your counterpart's conflict styles   Determine how you want to address the conflict   Prepare to resolve...

 If you are wondering what the differences between the SRE and DevOps are, as well as how these roles work with ITOps within an organisation then you are not alone; and best of all you are on the right blog post. Often enough business units in a company get confused, assigning the ServiceNow or Jira tickets or any other ticketing system of your preference, to the wrong group, and even having the incorrect expectations when doing resourcing. Let us go through definitions, insights and scenarios that will help you understand the difference. DevOps software development operations - AI Generated When it comes to DevOps and SRE, then you might be wondering which practice came first. While SRE may have originated a bit earlier, internally at Google, DevOps came first publicly as a practice and started to be used by companies. A few years later was when Google decided to open SRE to the world after the publication of the "Site Reliability Engineering" book. Therefore, technically sp...

 Do you know how much you contribute to the daily emissions in your city? How much does the city you live in contribute within your country? How much does your country contribute to the emissions on our planet? Do you know its impact? Do you know why we have a zero emission day? Photo by Pixabay via Pexels Let us start by getting our acronyms right, shall we? You may have heard the term GHG emissions, wondering what that means. GHG stands for Green House Gas. These gases are part of the cause of the rising temperature on Earth. What is interesting about them  is that they absorb infrared radiation resulting in the greenhouse effect. Within the greenhouse gases you find carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, water vapour. The vast majority of carbon dioxide emissions by humans come from the burning of fossil fuels. Key sectors to consider for GHG Fuel Exploitation Power Industry Transport Waste Agriculture Buildings Industry combustion and processes Top GHG emissions...

I recently finished reading "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. The book was incredibly insightful. If you are looking to improve your habits, and achieve results while you are at it, then this book is for you. It may help you form new habits, and break bad one. Without further due, here are my top three takeaways. Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich via Pexel, adapted by Beolle Takeaway 1:  The habit-forming loop: James outlines that the habit-forming loop consists of four stages Cue . The cue triggers the brain to expect a reward and is crucial for building automatic habits. It is typically associated with time, place, or feeling. For example, feeling bored could be a cue to the habit of using social media. Craving . This is the urge resulting from the cue. Using the above example, opening the social media app is the craving initiated by the cue of boredom. Response . An example of a response is the action of opening the social media app and using it. Reward . An example of reward i...

Democratizing AI is all about empowering others to use it, by making it available to them. Audiences, such as marketers in a company, will be able to access AI capabilities as part of their MarTech solutions, without the need of being technical. It could also be schools, where the younger generations are learning how to use it in responsible, secure, innovative, and creative ways. This is the year where companies, after discovery phases and teams experimenting, are looking to activate and take advantage of the AI advances. Generated with Microsoft Designer   And so, questions emerge, such as “What to democratize when leveraging AI?” There are common scenarios, as well as specific ones, that will depend on the company, and the industry they belong to. A common scenario, seen in many industries, when democratizing data is the data visualization and reporting . In digital marketing, as an example, data scientists and data analysts can automate reporting, making them available to the c...

 Recently, the European Parliament voted and passed the landmark EU AI Act. It's the first of its kind and sets a benchmark for future AI regulations worldwide . The EU AI Act lays the foundation for AI governance, and it's pertinent for organizations delving into AI systems to comply with the legislation, build robust and secure AI systems, and avoid non-compliance fines.  Photo by Karolina Grabowska via Pexels My three key takeaways from the legislation are as follows: The Act introduces the definition of an AI system: "An AI system is a machine-based system designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments" The Act introduces the classification of AI systems based on risk to society. The Act outlin...