My Values

Here I try to communicate my values in the hope that you will understand the kind of person I am. I do so because we all do our best work when we appreciate the people that we work with. I am not looking for an engagement solely to earn money. I am looking for an engagement that I will add to my list of I'm-glad-I-did-that experiences.

I consider myself a professional in the truest sense of the word and attempt to be the very best that I can be in all that I do. If you and I agree to an engagement, my primary goal will be that you will say at the end of that engagement that I was all you hoped for. It is the testimonials that I treasure. They stay with me forever, unlike the money that I may have earned!

I am passionate about data and deeply believe in data-based decision-making. That is how the world improves.

Perhaps as a result of my training as an engineer, I have always believed that architecture is important. It can be argued that little architecture is sufficient for simple problems, but thorough and thoughtful architecture is critical in solutions to complex problems. And, in the data world, we deal with extremely complex problems. So, though I started as an engineer, I was always drawn toward architecture. It appeals to my academic nature and it is the foundation upon which beautiful (robust, extensible, maintainable, cost-efficient) solutions are built.

And, speaking of complexity, I value simplicity. But, in the words attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
"I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity."
It is simplicity on the other side of complexity that I strive for. So I ask a lot of questions.

Just what is an "architecture", anyway? In our world of data, it is the conceptual foundation upon which the solution is built. Given that there are (typically) many folks who will build and maintain the solution, it is critical that the architecture be well-defined and well-understood. This is necessarily done through documentation and standards. So I am big on these. And those standards must be followed. I believe that an exceptional solution, is not comprised of exceptions.