Maybe I'm just getting older but I find that lately I keep repeating the need to simplify things.  Whether that's while creating a new Project Management Office or just with everyday life.  In fact recently a colleage and friend of mine posted an entry on his blog on how he made a change to simplify his life by adjusting his cell phone - and he is really enjoying his newfound freedom.  Today while I read this article on this year's leap second, I again realized how sometimes we make our lives too complicated.  Don't get me wrong, I love how technology has changed my life for the better and I really enjoy these little trivia facts such like the leap second but every now and then it's nice to just sit back and enjoy a relaxing pace of life and not think about things like this.  So during this crazy holiday season I encourage all of you to sit back, relax with friends and family and let go of the complexities we fill our lives with - even if just for a moment.

 Happy holidays!

Today I stumbled across the first in a series of posts on User Experience (UX) by Dr. Charles B. Kreitzberg and Ambrose Little.  The article, posted on the MSDN Magazine site, gives a great overview of what UX is and why its so important.  It also touches on how this field has lagged behind other aspects of the software development process until recently.  It also touches on a key point I try to make with my clients when talking about software design - UX doesn't have to cost a lot or take a lot of time.  I try to impress upon development teams how easy you can do some of the basic UX step by using paper prototypes.  Why paper?  I'm guessing that many of you have either seen or put together mock-ups of future systems or applications and if you ask a developer to do something like that (or even a business analyst) you usually end up with either a Photoshop picture or some stub of code that has the basics of screen layouts, etc.  The problem with these things is that you probably invested too much time to do them AND many users will look at them and assume you are farther along than you really are.

Enter paper prototypes.  I firmly believe that pictures are the best way to show intent and capability to end users when designing software.  With a quick glance they can see so much information even if functionality is only implied (seeing a picture that has dropdown boxes implies something about the data entry process for example).  By using paper and pencil you can quickly create screen or report mockups that convey a great deal of information and can even be used to conduct task flow testing and no one will mistake a piece of paper for anything other than what it is - paper.  They also tend to be more open with feedback and requests for changes because they don't feel locked in to a solution that you might have put a lot of effort in to, after all its just a pencil diagram.  This is a great tool in the agile environment or even for those who just want to speed up their design phase.

Hopefully future posts on the MSDN site will dive into how new tools are helping integrate UX into the development process.

As the Thanksgiving holiday weekend draws to a close, I want to share with some non-business fun with you.  Personally, I have always been fascinated with astronomy, aviation and aerospace in general and so any time I get a chance to get out and fly on a clear night it is one of my greatest pleasures.  Earlier this weekend I had a chance to do just that and our fun started on the drive to the airport as we tried to identify some of the brighter spots in the sky – not an easy task while driving on twisting roads with tall trees on each side.  And during our flight as we got away from the city lights we were treated to incredible views of the stars, planets and galaxies.  Truly a magnificent sight.

My wife and I are both intrigued by this stuff so several years ago we decided to get a telescope so that on clear nights we could tour the skies.  Our 8-inch Meade telescope makes that quite easy to do thanks to its tracking system – in fact we have even tracked the Shuttle and International Space Station a couple of times.  For us, being able to actually see these things is nothing short of inspiring. The technology that exists today makes it easy for anyone to see the sky.  There are lots of telescopes out there, ranging from just a few hundred dollars to thousands or even ten thousand (okay, maybe someday when I retire to an isolated chunk of land far away from city lights that might be a nice treat but for now I will stick to the lower end of the spectrum).  My point is there is something for everyone – even those who are unable to find those dark skies or just don’t want to mess with setting up a telescope.  For those and in fact everyone who likes to look at the sky, I recommend the WorldWide Telescope.  This freely downloadable application lets you pick the location and time and view the night sky by combining actual images and augmenting them with guided tours and insights from great astronomers.

So enjoy the holidays and maybe even inspire someone you know to start watching the sky.

Today I would just like to wish everyone a very safe and happy Thanksgiving.  This past year has certainly been very good to me and I would like to thank my family, friends and clients for their support and generousity.  I hope all of you can take the time this holiday season to be with the people who bring you happiness and enjoy your time together. 

Recently I have had a chance to do something I haven't done in a long time and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing it - writing code!  I have to admit it's been a while since I did any real software development and I was just a little bit rusty to start but I soon found I have a lot of help.  Now I have managed development and architecture teams for years since then and occasionally I have paused to wonder if I could ever really go back or would even want to.  So when a client of mine asked me to help them out and put together a quick call tracking / ticketing system it was with some hesitation that I agreed.

So where would I even start?  I certainly hadn't done any recent development and in fact the last bit of code I had really written from scratch was some web site stuff in classic ASP but even that was pretty limited and I had relied heavily on my old school knowledge to get me through it.  Naturally I turned to my vendor of choice for some help.  My first stop was the Microsoft Developer Network web site and I quickly found what I was looking for - and at a price even I was happy with!  The site is full of all kinds of information about Microsoft's development tools and preferred languages and includes links to blogs and community sites where you can find all kinds of good information and lots of startup code.  But best of all Microsoft has created a FREE version of their popular Visual Studio development suite - Visual Studio Express.  As its name implies there are some missing features but for the new developer or for someone that only occasionally needs a tool this is great.

Visual Studio Express comes in four flavors; Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Visual Web Developer.  The first three are language specific and targeted for Windows Framework application development while the fourth is meant for creating web applications and allows you to code in C# or VB.  Along with these 4 components there is the free SQL Server software called, not surprisingly, SQL Server Express.  All of these tools are based on the current 2008 versions of their commercial counterparts Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 but naturally have some limitations - for example the SQL Server Express only supports 1 processor, 1GB of memory and a maximum database size of 4GB, certainly enough for development and even small applications.

So naturally I dove in and quickly discovered that these tools were nothing like what I had used in my past.  Sure I was familiar with the automatic generation of code stubs for forms and controls and I had even seen the Intellisense to some degree but once I started using all of this stuff I was amazed at just how fast things came together.  For anyone not familiar with Intellisense it is the ultimate "sentence finisher".  As soon as you begin typing it begins to prompt you with options and then filling in pieces of code that you will need.  For example, it attempts to complete variable names for you or code segments such by automatically adding things like the "End If" statement for you whenever you start and "If" statement.  And if you are like me and aren't really sure of what properties or methods can be used with which objects and when it will prompt you though that as well based on the type of object or function you are working with.  Help like this was never around when I was coding for a living!

Anyway, I could go on for hours about all the cool things I rediscovered and how much fun and easy it is with the tools available today.  For those of you that are looking to get into development or know someone who is I highly recommend checking out these fantastic tools.  There are even toolkits for creating Facebook and Popfly applications not to mention complete open source starter kits for all kinds of typical applications.  So go download these free products and start unleashing your creative powers!

Lately I have been dealing with the PMO process, or maybe more accurately the lack of a PMO process, with many clients and I have shared many of my thoguhts here on this site.  Well in my efforts to create PMOs and simple, agile governance processes I came across a great series of webcasts that talk about some of these very things.  The series, available for download here, is presented by Mike Turner of Microsoft and references the Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) but also speaks generically about PMOs.  The MSF is also a great source of really generic practices - while published by Microsoft all aspects of the MSF can be accomplished without any Microsoft tools.  Naturally they like to think they have solutions that can help but the choice is yours.

I have also found that many organizations stuggle with the concepts of an iterative approach.  This doesn't always mean you have to be in an "agile" environment either, iterations can take on a very broad range of time and cover everything from a "program" to a build.  In the webcast you will find the picture displayed here on the right which I think does a great job of defining this broad range of iterations - anyone should be able to understand these definitions.

I highly recommend reviewing the webcast series for anyone who is looking to refine or create a PMO in their organization.

In a recent post I talked about the need for IT governance with just about any size company in order to manage their IT resources.  Based on some feedback from colleagues and interaction with some of my clients I thought it might be best to revisit this topic and dive in with a little more background.  In my experience IT governance (ITG) has always been a part of an organization's Project Management Office (PMO).  But as a former colleague of mine recently pointed out not everyone is familiar with the workings of a PMO.

All of this alphabet soup usually gets people, especially the finance folks, very nervous thinking that technology department is about to become incredibly bureaucratic and expensive.  While it's true that on many occasions this has been the case I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way.  These constructs can be executed in very simple forms and with minimal overhead and administrative burden.

Before going much further I think it's fair for me to explain what I think the goals are for an ITG process.  The ultimate goal of course is to make sure that technology resources are providing the most value to the firm but what does that mean?  Well, for starters I have never seen a company that didn't have a demand for technology resources that exceeded the IT team's ability to respond - demand always exceeds the supply.  So one of the most important roles of the ITG process is to provide a forum for vetting various ideas and needs within the organization and then prioritizing those initiatives.  This provides direction to the IT staff.  Secondly, IT has to give the business insight into the operations of the IT organization, IT needs to show them what they are getting for their investments.  This means there has to be a level of transparency in IT, status reports on major initiatives should be reviewed and operational stats should be shared (ex: uptime stats or number of requests processed, etc.).  And lastly the ITG process should serve as an opportunity for business and IT leaders to collaborate on corporate strategy and planning.

So with those goals in mind what do you need as a part of the ITG process?  Again, it can be very simple but in some form or another you need a list of all those technology related requests - without it you can't very well vet them all to determine priorities.  And as a part of that list you need to have some ballpark estimates regarding those requests, just rough guesses as to the effort/cost, value and time frame for these items.  For example, is this a labor intensive project that could be done in a month that would yield incredible cost savings or allow you to enter a new segment of the market?  These estimates don't have to be perfect, the point here is to get some relative benchmarks so that you can compare the ideas to each other and then make a decision as to which ones deserve further effort.  For large projects this might mean approving a request so that more detailed research can be done to refine the costs and value and then return for a final approval before proceeding.  This doesn't have to happen for all projects but if you are betting the future of the company on it you might want to have a couple of checkpoints along the way.  :)

You also need to have some idea as to the throughput capabilities of your IT organization.  Equally important to know that the priorities are is knowing how much of a dent you can make in that list.  If the first item on the list is so large that it takes the entire IT staff the business might decide to instead tackle the next three items first to get some quick wins.  Communicating your capacity plans also sets the stage in terms of expectations for project completion.  Better for people to know right up front that a project is going to take six months than to not tell them and have them start playing the "Are we there yet?" game right out of the gate.

And I've already hinted at the third component of the ITG process - who needs to be involved.  To be successful there has to be a representative from all the key business groups.  For example you might need to include your finance and HR leaders as well as sales and customer service.  And of course any heads of business lines.  You don't want the group to get too big but it needs to represent all the elements that are needed to make your organization a success.  In some organizations that means getting the C-level or EVP type folks responsible for these groups, in other companies it might be better to have people a layer closer to the action involved in this process.  Whatever the group they need to have two things; an understanding of the tactical and strategic needs of the group they represent AND the authority to make investment decisions.  One without the other does no good, you either end up spending lots of time and money on the wrong things or you are constantly waiting for someone who isn’t a part of the process to get back to you with final approval (i.e. more meetings to rehash all the details).

And that's about it.  All you need to do now is do this on a regular basis - I recommend monthly with an extended meeting once a quarter to get into more strategic planning.  Need help getting started?  CETEC Consulting can help you with that.

I'm sitting in a hotel tonight with not much else to watch but the election coverage.  I was one of the lucky ones that got out early this morning and only had to wait about 15 minutes to cast my vote and then it was off to the airport to visit one of my clients.  While waiting for the flight naturally all the news stations in the airport were talking about the election process.  Some were asking people what they liked and disliked about the process and what they would like to see changed.  I for one think that there is a place for electronic voting.  Clearly there are some bugs to work out but I'm sure there are some very simple solutions that will get us started.

And of course no election day would be complete without recalling one of my favorite election stories, one that occured exactly 56 years ago today and one in which technology played a big part...

In summer 1952, a Remington Rand executive approached CBS News chief Sig Mickelson and said the Univac might be able to plot early election-night returns against past voting patterns and spit out a predicted winner. Mickelson and anchor Walter Cronkite thought the claim was a load of baloney but figured it would at least be entertaining to try it on the air.

Eckert and Mauchly sought help from a University of Pennsylvania statistician, Max Woodbury. He and Mauchly wrote one of the first algorithms for computing, working at Mauchly's house because Mauchly had been blacklisted as pro-communist. "John wasn't allowed into the company anymore," says Mauchly's widow, Kay Mauchly Antonelli.

On election night, the 16,000-pound Univac remained at its home in Philadelphia. In the TV studio, CBS set up a fake computer - a panel embedded with blinking Christmas lights and a teletype machine. Cronkite sat next to it. Correspondent Charles Collingwood and a camera crew set up in front of the real Univac.

As polls began to close, clerks typed the data into the Univac using three Unityper machines, which punched holes in a paper tape that would be fed into the computer.

By 8:30 p.m. ET - long before news organizations of the era knew national election outcomes - Univac spit out a startling prediction. It said Eisenhower would get 438 electoral votes to Stevenson's 93 - a landslide victory. Because every poll had said the race would be tight, CBS didn't believe the computer and refused to air the prediction.

"Mauchly was at home getting telephone calls all the time about what was happening," Antonelli says. "All he could say was, 'Sit tight, we've done the best we could.' We sat there all night in front of the TV set with bated breath."

"It was essentially a live demo, on national TV," says Jim Senior, historian at Unisys, the computer giant that traces its roots to Remington Rand and Univac. "That took a lot of daring."

Under pressure, Woodbury rejiggered the algorithms. Univac then gave Eisenhower 8-to-7 odds over Stevenson. At 9:15 p.m., Cronkite reported that on the air. But Woodbury kept working and found he'd made a mistake. He ran the numbers again and got the original results - an Eisenhower landslide.

Late that night, as actual results came in, CBS realized Univac had been right. Embarrassed, Collingwood came back on the air and confessed to millions of viewers that Univac had predicted the results hours earlier.

In fact, the official count ended up being 442 electoral votes for Eisenhower and 89 for Stevenson. Univac had been off by less than 1%. It had missed the popular vote results by only 3%. Considering that the Univac had 5,000 vacuum tubes that did 1,000 calculations per second, that's pretty impressive. A musical Hallmark card has more computing power.

The public latched onto the Univac's performance. In 1952, people were as intrigued by computers as we are by SpaceShipOne. Stories ran on newspaper front pages. "Univac" suddenly became a generic term for those blinking electric brains.

 

Last time I talked about the need for IT to understand the business it serves.  The role of business analyst or business partner serves this purpose well.  Their mission is to learn what the business pain points are, where the business or segment of business is heading and create a road map of initiatives that will help them achieve those business goals.  And of course relay that info to IT so that the right technology can be created or deployed to support those initiatives.  As you might suspect, the demand for IT resources almost always exceeds the supply so some sort of vetting process needs to be inserted here or all you will have is an IT group that reacts to the "last loudest voice".

I'm guessing that a lot of you cringe when you hear the word "governance" and I can't blame you.  Companies have a terrible track record when trying to create committees or processes and all too often the guiding principle gets lost in lots of red tape.  But I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be that way.  Most of the clients I serve are small or mid-sized companies that just can't afford to get bogged down in some over engineered process or lose several people to "manage the process" so instead my advice to them is to keep it very simple.  An IT governance process can be as simple as assigning someone (yes, it has to be someONE and not a group) to be the point person for ALL requests for IT resources.  Now I'm not talking about help desk things which I define as "it worked yesterday and now it doesn't" or the "I can't get my printer to work" kind of stuff.  Here I am referring to enhancements to existing systems or requests for new ones.  This person has to own "the list" of these requests and that list can take any form you want right down to a piece of paper or a whiteboard.  Then I suggest that the leaders of the business units meet once a month to review the list, confirm that the priority of the items is still correct and determine where any new requests since the last meeting need to be placed on this list.  The first meeting is the toughest since you will need to prioritize the entire list but after that it starts to get easier - all you need to do is ask yourselves if there is reason to change the priorities that you all agreed on before.  I know this seems like an oversimplification, and to some extent it is, but really it doesn't have to be much harder than that.  you can even improve the process by extending that monthly meeting once each quarter to talk about strategic direction - not just for It but of the company so that IT and everyone else can see what they will need to do in the coming months and years.  That's where those road maps come in to play too.

So, there you have it.  Start by getting to know your business needs and then keep a list of all the demands that are being placed on IT to meet those needs and keep that list prioritized.  Oh, and then of course you have to execute on that list but that's another topic.

Over the last several weeks I have been working with a couple of new clients to review their business and IT strategies.  I have also been interviewing with a firm that is looking for someone to manage that process full time.  And it comes as no surprise that many organizations are struggling with this.  Most of my clients are small to mid-sized companies that are looking to grow their business.  They have realized that technology is going to play a big part in that growth.  None of them are in the software or technology hardware business; they are a mix of organizations that provide products or services to individuals and other companies.  So for them it’s important to get as much out of technology as they can without spending their entire operating budget to do so.  In fact it is about optimizing that spend and focusing on the right things that lead them to my doorstep.

So what have I found?  Well, most companies when first starting out have only a handful of people and there seems to be a never ending stream of things that needs to get done.  So, they look for people that can do it all, not really specialists but have a general aptitude to do many things.  And IT departments are no different.  Those first few people do everything from purchase and set up PCs to run the data center (which might be just a lone server in a closet or under someone’s desk).  And you can forget about process, policies and communication, these folks are too busy just trying to keep up with the demands of the business.  But there comes a time when the business has grown up a little when you need something more.  Maybe you've grown to the point where there are now numerous people in IT but it seems like they are all just running around putting out fires or maybe the business units can't seem to get the attention of IT when they need it most and so it becomes an exercise in managing IT by the last, loudest voice.  Frustrating for all parties involved.

Some of the first things I do when looking at companies like this is to try to get an idea of the workload, understand the IT resources that are available and listen to what both sides (IT and the business) are saying.  It’s amazing what you can learn just by listening.  And one of the most common themes I hear is that IT has lost touch with the business needs –not completely unexpected if all you do is run around and put out fires every day.  What is needed is some organization and refinement of IT roles and responsibilities.  What I try to do is suggest means of gaining clarity within IT and strengthen the ties between technology and business.  Typically that means creating a team within the IT department that focuses on understanding the business – enter the business analyst. 

In my experience one of the best ways for small companies to begin this process is to take someone out of the business unit(s) and make them part of that IT organization.  This can be a very controversial approach since the same business unit you are attempting to help is probably already understaffed and stealing one of their precious resources is not going to make you a popular person – at least not initially.  Choosing the correct person is crucial, he or she has to be articulate and knowledgeable about the processes in place today but also creative and open to looking at the problems in a new way.  Remind potential candidates that in many ways they are going to live the dream of “if you can’t beat them then join them” as they will now be part of that IT team they were cursing at only yesterday.  Ideally, these people are also some of the departmental technology leaders, the ones that make all those Office-based solutions to try to make their own life better while waiting for IT to give them a real solution.  But let’s be perfectly clear, the new role this person is taking on is NOT to create new solutions or take the Access database the created for themselves in their old job and now give it to the rest of the company.  No, this role is about DEFINING what the solution needs to be able to do and not about how it does it (that’s for the developers and architects to decide).  The person in this role has to be able to accept that they are going to be using their business knowledge to defining the “what” not the “how”, they are being hired not for their technical capabilities but their subject matter expertise.  Why?  Because there are already people with specialized technology training that can create the right solution if only they could get someone to talk to them long enough so they could understand just what that solution had to look like.  Because the business analyst understands enough of the business he or she can spend a relatively short time with the front line business people gaining an understanding of their pain and the implications of any changes to existing processes, etc.  The business analyst can then take that knowledge and spend hours, days or even weeks working with the technology specialists to document and explain exactly what is needed, the functional details and all the things that must be considered when creating a solution.

Don’t get me wrong, there are also plenty of good business analysts out there in the world that don’t have to come from your operating units.  And even if you do steal someone from those units you need to invest in them so they can get the training that will make them even more effective.  The important thing to note here is what the role of the business analyst is and what it is not.

Next up: Project Management