The One-Sided Journal Entry

"That could be fixed in the system", I said to the weary auditor, "with a one-sided journal entry". Her brow furrowed slightly. "A what?" "A one-sided journal entry. You know, add a debit amount to one account without crediting another." Her frown deepened. "I don't understand". "Well", I said, "this system normally doesn't allow a one-sided journal entry - or at least I don't know how to do it. But it should be possible, I've seen it in other systems."…

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Designing for Devices

My last entry on design for a bit - just some thoughts on the added complexity when designing applications for multiple client devices. Fast Changing Device Landscape The "last mile" of user/computer interaction has seen a number of exciting innovations over the past year or so. Phones are getting physically smaller, yet have bulked up their connectedness and capabilities - and the shrinking screen, now touch-sensitive, has blown up into the ubiquitous iPad and a host of next-gen touchscreens. Yes,…

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Interface Design Skills for Coders (and vice-versa)

Like a technical peanut butter cup - two great skill sets that go great together. What really happens when artists and coders mash things up? Intuitive Interactions: Are application developers adept at effective design? I think, as a group, no - witness all of the effort put forth to wrap "user friendly screens" in front of ERPs major and minor. Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, SQLWindows, and their ilk spawned legions of wanna-be UI designers, presented with a multitude of gadgets, and…

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PM Anti-Patterns That Increase IT Project Cycle Time

Lots of conversation at work these days about PMO, resource prioritization, and reducing cycle time for IT projects. I feel a series of posts coming on ... IAPL, we launched a project to bring test discipline to our technology efforts. The team was writing standards and guidelines for test scripts, implementing integrated testing tools supplied by the ERP vendor, and adding steps to our project methodology requiring test scripts for all system changes. As the project dragged into a fourth…

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Excel vs. RDBMS: Choosing the Technology, Winning the Arguments

Businesses large and small, private and public, for-profit and not, commonly control critical business processes using the EIE platform (which means Everything in Excel - always good for a laugh in your next PowerPoint - jpmacl). Folks in the business get used to the power and control they have with spreadsheets, and who can blame them? Excel is … … fast and flexible … easy to learn Everybody has a copy I don't have to go through IT Remember, most…

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Quality requirements for technical documentation are lower than user documentation

Ok, don't freak out now ... All I want to point out is that the apparent need for screen prints of every step in the process is a bit overdone, especially when we're talking about technical documents. Screen prints / images in the documentation typically means the electronic documents get unmanageably huge, even if you shrink the .JPGs, and few people know how to do that. Plus, you indirectly commit yourself / your organization to a huge maintenance burden. because…

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Custom Code Bad, Custom Code Good – Notes for your Software License Agreement

At a vendor presentation recently, I saw something funny on a slide of "best practices" for implementing supply chain planning in SAP: Avoid ZAPO and ZATP ... which means Avoid customizing ATP and APO functions in SAP <aside> A bit of tech humor there; the convention for naming customized code in SAP is to prefix with a Z. Most platforms have unique styles for calling out their customizations. For QAD (written in Progress/4GL), the accepted prefix is xx_. On AS/400…

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Flexible intranet search does not have to mean a single search interface

Trying to provide a simple, flexible search capability for your organization's reams of historical documents? Using a project process that generates the typical stacks of documents, databases full of status reports and issues, and other "stuff"? It's important to think about the knowledge we are generating, and the best way to capture that knowledge – and not worry too much about how we’re going to search through those deliverables. There is no one way to capture / store different kinds…

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