Making IT Happen

Our new website went live recently. It is very simple, and we're all very happy with it.

However, we almost ended up with a website that no-one really liked. Main lesson learned? Don't design by committee.

Design is one of those professional areas where it always strikes me that there are low barriers to entry - everyone has an opinion. People who wouldn't presume to tell a brain surgeon how to do her job will expound at length on their ideas on web design.

Hannah, our excellent web designer, was pulling her hair out with contradictory guidance from everyone involved. Hannah came up with an initial version of the website that responded to everyone's every design input, and it met every requirement. When I discussed it with Hannah I found it had a subtle flaw - she didn't like it.

An hour of scribbling later and we'd come up with a functional structure we liked, and a week later Hannah produced a prototype of the new site which everyone thought was a knockout. I then spent a day editing all the text into digestable chunks (someone had to do it) and you can see the results.

Fascinating story in Computing last week about the creation within the US Air Force of Afcyber - a 30,000 strong 'army' for cyber warfare.

The article goes on to mention that there is no military equivalent in the UK. I find this surprising. I remember attending a lecture by Major General Sir Laurence New who described his role commanding a tank division (or other military grouping - not sure what Major Generals command in the hierarchy of things) in West Germany in the 1980's. Someone asked him what the most important part of his job was and he responded "readiness". He went on to elaborate that with how ever many soviet divisions just across the border, his troops had to be constantly ready to meet the threat.

Do we have the same level of readiness to meet cyber equivalent of the wave of soviet tanks? I'm thinking of theose military comparison maps with numbers of tanks, planes, ships etc - how would we fare in the equivalent cyber warfare resources map?