AGILE AND SSADM, WHAT IS A USER STORY

17 July 2025

Agile User Stories and SSADM

https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/agile-software-development/what-is-user-story/

1. Summary: What is a User Story?

A user story is a short, simple description of a feature or requirement written from the perspective of the person who desires the functionality—typically a user or customer. In Agile development, user stories replace traditional system requirements to promote flexibility, collaboration, and fast iteration.

A user story typically follows the format:
“As a [type of user], I want [an action] so that [a benefit/a value].”

This ensures the feature is grounded in user value. User stories are intentionally brief and act as placeholders for further conversation and refinement. They are prioritized in a product backlog, broken down into epics or tasks, and selected for development during sprint planning.

A well-written user story is INVEST:
- Independent
- Negotiable
- Valuable
- Estimable
- Small
- Testable

The 'Three Cs' of user stories are:
- Card: The written description (usually on a card or in a tracking system)
- Conversation: Dialogue among stakeholders to clarify and refine
- Confirmation: Acceptance criteria that confirm completion

This method supports iterative development, continuous feedback, and stakeholder engagement.

2. Glossary of Agile User Story Methodology

·        User Story: A brief, simple description of a feature from the user's perspective.

·        Agile: A methodology emphasizing iterative development, collaboration, and flexibility.

·        Product Backlog: A prioritized list of all desired work or features.

·        Epic: A large user story that can be broken down into smaller ones.

·        Task: A technical work unit derived from a user story.

·        Sprint: A fixed time period for completing selected user stories.

·        Sprint Planning: A meeting to choose which user stories to implement during a sprint.

·        INVEST: Checklist for good user stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable.

·        Three Cs: Card (description), Conversation (discussion), Confirmation (acceptance criteria).

·        Acceptance Criteria: Conditions that must be met for a story to be complete.

·        Customer-Centric: Focus on delivering value to the user, not internal technical needs.

3. Comparison of Agile User Stories vs. SSADM

SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method) is a waterfall methodology focused on thorough planning, rigorous documentation, and structured stages: feasibility, requirements analysis, logical data modeling, etc. It is best for stable and regulated environments.

Agile uses evolving user stories instead of static requirements. It values working software, frequent feedback, and adaptation. Documentation is minimal and collaboration is central.

Agile’s user stories fit a 'Three Layered' approach to requirements:
1. Epics (high-level goals)
2. Stories (concrete features)
3. Tasks (developer-level implementation units)

In contrast, SSADM follows:
1. Business Requirements
2. Functional Specification
3. Technical Specification

Where SSADM assumes requirements are knowable upfront, Agile embraces change and iterative clarification.

4. Glossary Mapping: Agile vs. SSADM

Agile Term	SSADM Equivalent	Comment / Mapping Logic
User Story	Process Specification	Describes functionality; refined into DFD and ELH in SSADM
Epic	Business Area Definition	High-level domain requirements
Task	Elementary Process / Module	Breakdown of a process step in DFD
Product Backlog	Requirements Catalogue	Centralised list of required system behaviours
Sprint	Phase in Project Plan	Time-boxed execution within structured lifecycle
Acceptance Criteria	Test Specification	Formal validation in SSADM
Three Cs	Structured Interview + Requirement Statement	Story lifecycle mirrors early SSADM stages
INVEST	Requirement Quality Guidelines	SSADM lacks explicit acronym but uses best practice
Card	Requirement Entry	Initial placeholder; becomes documented formally in SSADM
Conversation	Stakeholder Workshops	Corresponds to structured interviews and JAD sessions
Confirmation	Verification via Test Plan	Formalised in SSADM Test and Evaluation phase
Backlog Grooming	Requirements Review Meeting	SSADM equivalent is periodic review cycles
Logical Model	LDM (Logical Data Model)	Agile infers data; SSADM models explicitly
Flow of Interaction	DFD (Data Flow Diagram)	DFDs model data movement—analogous to interaction flow
State or Scenarios	ELH (Entity Life History)	Entity behaviour over time; maps loosely to user scenarios

[End]

Read More

THIS ORDER IS FINISHED, HOW TO REPLACE IT

13 July 2025

How to understand Trump, Tulsi and the Role of the Outsider

When I read that Tulsi Gabbard is staying in Trump’s administration, despite being silenced after he bombed Iran - ignoring intelligence she brought to him - I felt a sense of betrayal. She ran in 2020 on an anti-interventionist platform, committed to regime-change restraint and "speaking truth to power". People believed in her integrity. That image helped Trump win in 2024.

She hasn't resigned, she remains quietly loyal. She had millions of followers within the MAGA movement who trusted her honesty. What do they feel now? Cornered, confused, betrayed, sickened - seeing another promise broken in the name of loyalty to Trump - Ukraine, Iran, Epstein....

We saw similar reversals over Epstein’s files, or Trump’s pledge to halt the Ukraine war in 24 hours...only for him to now want to rearm Kyiv. This outsider was meant to dismantle the very systems that birthed him. Instead, he’s been absorbed into the establishment. He’s gone from outsider to insider, now part of the establishment he once railed against.

I’ve met people like this before. They start with a chip on their shoulder, climb in, and once they gain acceptance, true reform disappears. It becomes clear that his real loyalty is to his own standing. The rest was rhetoric - the consequences of what he says don't matter to him, his positions are not serious.

At this point, total cynicism seems the only rational response to any saviour narrative. As tempting as the sirens sound, we must “strap ourselves to the mast”. Listen without giving up ourselves. Not be fooled by grand promises, not be deceived.

So, what do we do? We act locally, not globally. The idea I learned was “think global, act local". Build resilience in local communities. Pockets of resistance can crack the system better than national revolts.

What we need now is not revolution, but insurgency in the grassroots sense, new systems emerging in the cracks of the old. Self-help (self build), alternative independent media outlets, parallel financial tools (gold, crypto, local credit unions / building societies, barter), local education efforts including youtube, neighbourhood resilience end resistance. These aren’t panaceas, but they keep a culture of resistance alive while the old order crumbles away.

Finally, if the economic and institutional structure is collapsing, what replaces it? Is it invasion, an outside power, a foreign Empire? Or is it an insurgency of local systems, plank by plank, bottom-up, that gradually builds something more lasting?

This is not utopian, it’s pragmatic. The fourth turning is here. If we’re smart, it’s our best shot at generational change when all the supposed saviours and utopianists have let us down.

Read More

THE BRITISH EMPIRE HAS NOT DISAPPEARED, IT HAS DE-MATERIALISED

6 July 2025

Yesterday, we looked at Britain's influence over Washington. In this post, we shall consider the view that “all that’s left of the British Empire is the City of London”, and that financial power, not military empire, remains Britain’s legacy and its tool of influence.

1. The City of London: What Is It?

The City of London (not to be confused with Greater London) is a tiny, ancient jurisdiction - a square mile - with its own Lord Mayor, its own police force, and a certain legal status. In practical / financial matters, it is one of the three global nodes of finance alongside Wall Street and Hong Kong / Shanghai.

The British Empire once ruled over a quarter of the world's land and people, with its authority backed by naval power, colonial governors, and direct political control. Today, the Union Jack no longer flies over distant dominions, but the empire has not vanished, it has evolved from military rule to financial rule. A rule centred in the City of London and its offshore networks, where influence flows quietly through law, money, and global finance.

So the British Empire has faded in a military, overt power and control sense, but the City remains an empire of financing capital: a global command centre for currency trading, offshore finance, investment banking, and legal arbitration.

2. What Are Its Powers?

Here are the core instruments of financial power based in or routed through the City:

2.1 Foreign Exchange Control

London is the world’s largest foreign exchange market.

Over $3.8 trillion trades daily through the City (Bank for International Settlements, 2022).

This gives enormous leverage over currency flows, and thus over the monetary sovereignty of other nations.

2.2 Offshore Empire

The British "spider web" of offshore financial centres includes Jersey, Guernsey, the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Gibraltar, and more.

These Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories are legally distinct but act as tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions.

No one should be surprised when global elites and corporations use the good offices of the City of London to avoid taxes, hide assets, and move capital invisibly.

2.3 Legal and Dispute Infrastructure

So that is as to the empire of tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions.

In addition, the British law we are so proud of governs most international contracts, especially in shipping, insurance, and trade finance.

London is the preferred venue for commercial arbitration and debt resolution, even for foreign clients with no link to Britain.

This creates a judicial ecosystem that silently influences how global business is done.

2.4 Financialisation of Industry

The City manages financial services and rhus how finance and investment is used to dominate the production of real goods. This financialisation model was later exported to the US under Reagan and Clinton.

We have discussed in previous posts how financialisation of economies is achieved and its consequences - British economic elites shifted away from manufacturing post-WWII and backed neoliberal globalisation, a switch that began in the 1980s and really accelerated with China's admission to the WTO at the turn of the century. This evolution benefited finance but shipped out the industrial base to low labour cost countries.

2.5 Influence Over Washington

- Through shared interests between Anglo-American banks (e.g. HSBC, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan) and law firms, there exists what some call an “Atlanticist deep-finance network.”

Take, for example, the case of Clifford Chance LLP, one of the UK’s “Magic Circle” firms. Clifford Chance specialises in banking, finance, capital markets, and international dispute resolution. It has deep ties to global banks, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth clients. With offices in over 30 countries, it has a truly global reach.

- The Federal Reserve, IMF, and World Bank are often staffed and influenced by alumni from institutions entwined with the City.

For example, Mark Carney is a key figure in global finance. He embodies the Anglo-American financial nexus. A former Governor of both the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, now PM of Canada, Carney spent over a decade at Goldman Sachs in London, specialising in sovereign risk and emerging markets. He later chaired the Financial Stability Board, advised the UN on climate finance, and played a leading role in shaping central bank digital currency (CBDC) policy, linking The City of London, Wall Street, and multilateral bodies like the IMF and World Bank.

- Think tanks (e.g. Chatham House, Atlantic Council) link British and U.S. policy circles with financial backing from City-connected entities. This is where the vision is conceived.

Here's a brief, concrete example. Chatham House, a leading UK foreign policy think tank, regularly hosts senior figures from British banks, oil firms, and legal consultancies... many with City of London ties. Its funders include HSBC, Shell, and Standard Chartered, and it collaborates with the Atlantic Council, its U.S. counterpart, which is backed by JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs. These institutions shape reports on global governance, sanctions policy, and financial regulation, as used by policymakers in both London and Washington.

3. How Is This Power Used?

We have looked at the five most important sources of power of the City of London:

1 - Foreign Exchange Control - London is the world’s largest foreign exchange market.

2 - Offshore Empire of Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories that act as tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions.

3 - The Legal and Dispute Infrastructure that makes London the preferred venue for commercial arbitration and debt resolution.

4 - Financialisation of Industry is at least in part managed by The City, its financial services that dominate the productive capacity of The West.

5 - Influence Over Washington, achieved through think tanks linking British and U.S. policy circles with financial backing from City-connected entities.

Now let's look at how these powers are exercised in the execution of the City's interests and plans.

3.1 Market Leverage

The City can make or break currencies, tank emerging markets, or starve countries of capital. Nowadays, it does this with trade in preference to troops.

When a state challenges the liberal financial order (e.g. capital controls, nationalisation of national assets), it risks being locked out of markets or hit with a currency run. Colour revolutions replace non-conforming governments.

3.2 Elite Integration

Global billionaires and kleptocrats keep their money in British offshore centres, in laundered bank accounts, on investment platforms, in London real estate.

This creates a tacit alliance: oligarchs who may oppose the West politically are compromised by their financial dependence.

3.3 Policy Shaping via the IMF and World Bank

These institutions promote free-market capitalism, open capital flows, and global economic integration. They enforce integration through application of the “rules”: privatisation, deregulation, austerity.

The City’s expertise, staffing, and political networks heavily influence and lead these organisations, even as they sit in Washington, arch home of "the Deep State".

4. A “Post-Imperial” Empire of Finance?

While Britain no longer rules through redcoats and viceroys, it still exerts soft and hard power through its financial infrastructure.

The Transformation: Old Empire to Modern Format

This is how the old empire continues to punch above its weight and lead Washington:

Naval supremacy -> Currency and capital flow dominance

Governors and Raj -> Compliance lawyers and hedge fund managers

Colonial taxation -> Tax havens and offshore arbitrage

Gunboats -> Sanctions, tariffs, confiscations, even market pressure and "forward guidance".

5. Conclusion: The Empire Didn't Die, It Dissolved into Credit and Contracts.

The claim that “all that remains of the British Empire is the City of London” may be partly metaphorical, but it comes across as true.  What has happened is that the form of control has changed, from explicit political and military control over the sovereignty of other estates, to coaxing them in to financial dependency, from land ro balance sheets, from army uniform to pinstripe suit - this is the real reason why Britain no longer has an army . 

The form of control has changed, but the reach remains global, the tools are more subtle and complex, but the consequences - 

nations lose sovereignty and are vassalised, public services are sold off cheaply to new oligarchs, inequality widens, entire economies can be crashed, governments get replaced - are just as real.

Control of capital flows, legal contracts, and offshore safe havens has replaced territorial conquest - the pen (and the spreadsheet) are mightier than the sword.

Read More

4TH OF JULY. HOW INDEPENDENT IS AMERICA OF BRITAIN?

5 July 2025

HOW INDEPENDENT IS AMERICA FROM BRITAIN?

1. 4 July: Political Independence, Economic Entanglement

The U.S. declared its political break from Britain on this day in 1776. But beneath the flags and fireworks, a deeper entanglement remains, especially in the financial, intelligence, and elite spheres. The question isn’t whether America governs itself, but whether it does so free of the old imperial circuitry.

2. Empire Repackaged as Finance

The City of London is no ordinary district. It’s a sovereign-like financial enclave, a global hub for offshore money, derivatives, forex, and tax avoidance. Many of America’s biggest corporations and hedge funds still operate through its looser regulations and offshore extensions like the Cayman Islands and Jersey. This isn’t colonialism—it’s soft entrapment, entrapment by design.

3. Still Whispering in the Corridors

Old ties never died, they just adapted. A network of shared education (Oxbridge, Ivy League), think tanks (Chatham House, Council on Foreign Relations), media (Economist, WSJ), and global finance (The City, Cambridge, Wall Street, rhe offshore treasure islands), continues to align U.S. and British elite interests. Quigley called it the Anglo-American Establishment. It’s not conspiracy, it’s structure. You can trace it from Bretton Woods to BlackRock.

4. Strategic Culture – The Shadow of Empire (The Five Eyes intelligence alliance) binds the UK and U.S. in near-total surveillance cooperation, with a sifnificant regional role for Israel. Military strategies, especially in the Middle East and Russia, often follow old British imperial routes and date back to the First Crimean War and Mackinder. Even soft power (the BBC, English common law, royal mystique) maintains a ghostly grip on America’s elite imagination.

5. Conclusion – Free, but not unentangled,

America is sovereign on paper, but in finance, strategy, and elite thinking, it remains woven into Britain’s imperial after-life, in particular via the City of London. The real independence war never ended, it just moved offshore.

Read More

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CAUCUSES

2 July 2025

Iran says no.

Azerbaijan as cattering ram into Iran, to split Iran from Russia

Azerbaijan crime ring, offset 1h20m

1. The Caucasus as "Shatterbelt"

Like the Balkans and the Levant, the Caucasus is what geopolitical theorists call a shatterbelt: a region caught between rival powers, fragmented by history, and prone to chronic instability.

This is a very mountainous zone, sandwiched between the Black and Caspian Seas. Its rugged topography of mountains, valleys, and rivers sharpens ethnic divisions, but its geography also makes it a natural transit corridor between Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

2. A Region of Empires and Faultlines

For centuries, the Caucasus was contested by Turkey, Russia, and Persia. Even under Soviet control, Moscow never fully subdued the region, which includes volatile territories such as Chechnya.

The region’s diversity is staggering: dozens of peoples, languages, and faiths - Orthodox Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims, Jews, Yazidis - all shaped by bitter memories of past imperialism, genocide, and forced migration. These faultlines are political as much as they are ethnic.

3. Shatterbelts on the Edge of Empire

Looking at a map, the Balkans, Levant, and Caucasus all lie along the tectonic political plates of Europe and Asia. When outside powers weaken or start backing different local actors, the communities of the Caucasus often default back to historic conflicts.

In particular, if Russia fails to secure its southeastern flank, it faces potential threats from Iran, or from jihadist flows and instability across the Middle East.

4. The Energy Corridor and Russia’s Strategic Dilemma

Of more immediate importance: two critical oil and gas pipelines traverse the South Caucasus, connecting Caspian Sea energy reserves to Western markets, and bypassing Russian and Iranian territory. This corridor is now of vital importance to Europe, given the steep drop in Russian energy imports as a result of the proxy war in Ukraine.

For Russia, the stakes are double-edged. It opposes these pipelines yet also has a growing interest in maintaining good relations with Iran - Iran is the only country that offers Moscow a realistic land-and-sea route to the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, bypassing Western-controlled chokepoints.

5. Conclusion: The New Great Game

What we are witnessing is the continuation of the Great Game that was once fought out between Imperial Britain, jealous particularly of the route to India, and Tsarist Russia, now being played out between NATO, Russia, Iran, and also rising Asian powers.

The Caucasus remains what it has always been: a "buffer, a battleground, and a bottleneck", as one writer, put it. Whether this region settles into fragile peace or erupts once again into conflict will depend not only on local actors, but on the shifting ambitions and fears of the great powers that surround it.

Glossary of Terms

1. Shatterbelt

A region caught between major powers, prone to fragmentation and conflict.

The Caucasus, like the Balkans and the Levant, lies between empires and civilisations. These regions often experience repeated foreign intervention, ethnic division, and wars—especially when global power balances shift.

2. The Great Game

A 19th-century term for the strategic rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia.

The “new” Great Game refers to today’s geopolitical contest over the Caucasus, Central Asia, and energy routes, now involving Russia, NATO, Iran, China, and others.

3. Energy Corridor

A route that transports oil and gas from resource-rich regions to international markets.

The South Caucasus hosts pipelines that carry Caspian energy westward to Europe, bypassing Russian and Iranian territory. This makes the region vital to energy security.

4. Caspian Sea

The world’s largest inland body of water, bordered by Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan.

Rich in oil and gas reserves, it is a focal point of competition between powers that seek control of its energy exports

5. Strait of Hormuz

A narrow sea passage between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

Roughly 30% of the world’s seaborne oil passes through it, largely to Europe. Although not in the Caucasus, Russia’s interest in accessing this strait via Iran underlines its strategic ambitions.

6. Buffer Zone

A region situated between two rival powers, often unstable but important for security.

The Caucasus acts as a buffer between Russia and the Middle East, and between Western and Eastern spheres of influence.

7. Ethno-religious Fragmentation

The coexistence of multiple ethnic and religious groups in a single region, often without a shared national identity.

This defines much of the Caucasus, home to Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Chechens, Ossetians, Lezgins, and more.

8. Proxy War

A conflict where external powers support different local sides rather than fight directly.

The Ukraine war is the most visible example today, but the Caucasus has also seen foreign-backed factions play out wider rivalries.

9. Hierarchy

This is about order and chaos. The word "hierarchy" comes from the Greek "hierarkhia," meaning "rule of a high priest," which combines "hieros" (holy) and "archos" (ruler). Ipposite: anarchy - from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government".

[End]

Read More