author's note: 3rd of 3 parts of an essay first published in 2000. Check out part 1 and part 2 ... jpm Address the Rest The elevator speech follows rather quickly from the executive summary. The power of this “sound bite” is in it’s clarity and consistency – make sure that everyone involved in the organization can deliver it the same way. Remember, in a small company, everybody is a salesman! Of course, the elevator speech should not be viewed…
author's note: 2nd of 3 parts of an essay first published in 2000. Check out part 1 here ... jpm Starting in the Middle To get moving on step 1 – capturing the “vision” – we’ll start in the middle with the executive summary. This presentation will help gather the relevant “what”, “why”, and “how”, without going into too much detail or oversimplifying. A little structure now will allow you to quickly summarize the salient points into your elevator speech…
author's note: I was recently asked about this essay, first published in 2000, so I thought I'd trot it back out as a series of posts. Written near the end of the dot-com boom, it still has some resonance, even with internal IT projects ... jpm Congratulations! Getting that terrific startup idea that has real business potential can be the easiest and the hardest part of going entrepreneurial. It’s fun to bat about ideas, look into new and exciting technologies,…
Consider these conversations over the past few weeks: At SAPPHIRE, I spoke with many from the big Fortune 1000-type companies, on outsourcing (or "co-sourcing", a new PC term). Lots of discussion around India; they have memorized the flight schedules, swap stories about social disparity and the caste system, and rattle off all of the cities they have visited. Note that it's not all about India; I talked with organizations who have moved their SAP Center of Excellence (support and/or development) to…
I've talked with a couple of IT leads that are thinking about putting in an enterprise search capability. It always seems to come down to two basic options; search integrated with a collaboration / portal platform, or a dedicated appliance, pointed at the G: Drive. You know the G: Drive - every corporation has one (ok, sometimes it's the F: drive, or the Common folder). I'm pretty sure the name is a throwback to the late 80's, when DOS was…
A bit of Friday fun ... I was at a trade show a few weeks ago, and noticed a repeating pattern on many slides. I've heard this in vendor pitches and internal presentations as well - every piece of software and/or process must be for the management of something. So, as I sat trapped in a droning presentation, waiting for the "vendor showcase" to begin (free dinner!), I wondered how difficult it would be to hit every letter in the…
I've written about the basic project proposal (for consulting groups) or charter (for internal IT) in the past. The point of any project summary document is to tee up the what and the why, using an outline like this: Description: What are we trying to accomplish here? What is our ultimate goal? Objectives: These are project objectives, not business objectives. How will we know we are done? Benefits: Why should we consider doing this? What are we getting? Alternatives: Are…
Had a really good conversation about metrics the other day. We've been discussing ways to express how our systems are performing, delivering value, and staying available - and I'd like to use the same general structure for all systems, regardless of function (transactions, integrations, analytics) or platform (Wintel, AS/400, Open Systems). For each type of metric, we need to understand two dimensions: Performance against some Target. This can either be a baseline (a minimum or average expected score), or a…
If your objective is a "sense of urgency", or maybe "time to value", please don't think this gives you carte blanche to push patchy, chewing-gum-and-bailing-wire solutions out into production. Expect the expectation that the production systems' availability level must be maintained. Confused? It sounds like I'm taking two opposing sides ... I want speed and quality, and doesn't the Iron Triangle force you to pick between the two? It's possible, of course, you just need to practice a little discipline…
Project managers must communicate the trade-off between additional functionality and the time required to fully test the work. Don't assume testing will be completed - it's something that takes time!