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…

Strategies for Fee Structures in Consulting Engagements

Yet another vendor seminar last month, and the idiosyncrasy of the day was an abnormal amount of focus on the fee structure (they were presenting their expertise on a certain platform, and talk of fees was a tad disconcerting). The vendor is, of course, railing against the fixed fee - puts all the risk on them, artificially constrains the project, etc. They didn't mention how the fixed fee enables an upside on their part - if the Vendor (contractor/consultant/them) pads…

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…

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Trying to provide a simple, flexible search capability for your organization's reams of historical documents?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…

Misapplying the Pareto principle

8 January, 2006
Project Management, Business Value of IT
2 Comments

Here's an interesting phenomenon I've encountered before ... When analyzing a specific section of a business, people seem to naturally focus attention and conversation on the top two or three customers/products/vendors that together represent (say) 20% of the revenues/costs/contracts. Our objective is to look at the data and identify opportunities (increase revenues, cut COGS, aggregate contracts); unfortunately, processing the data for these customers/products/vendors is currently a 100% manual task. Of course; this is why there is apparently so much "opportunity"…

The “Army Rangers” model for IT Professionals

I got a chance to read over some Gartner predictions for 2006 (available $ online). One that struck me said that the job market for IT specialists will shrink 40 percent by 2010. Hey, that's only a few years away! The article makes the point that "... IT people ... must have the capacity to move fluidly and effortlessly into multiple projects, disciplines, and processes." I like to cite, as an excellent illustration of this idea, the movie Black Hawk…

Build a Framework: Your chart junk is my roadmap / vision statement

I remember in the late 90's, seeing many examples of the little train of wedgies that folks used to characterize their business processes: I've used them myself (some of the above samples are mine, I'm comfortable in admitting it) - of course, I typically don't make this stuff up, I adapt from other examples, like everyone else. As I searched for a reasonable picture / schematic / "framework" for a "supply chain", I stumbled across what I believe to be…

A clash of languages over IM (bilingual? trilingual? quadlingual?)

I've been IM'g in a work atmosphere for over a year now, with internal and external folks, and still actively networking for tech info, support, etc. That peer group has a fairly well-defined set of etiquette, jargon, and style. In my new company, we are rolling out enterprise IM, and for most folks (including IT!), this is a "foreign language". (I'm "jpm1234" in the conversations below ...) Challenge #1: I think faster than I type, so I get a bit…

To print or not to print? Depends on the life span of the content …

I've been (correctly) picked off as having an electronic preference for communications. Please don't hand me a printout - send an ecopy of that document, PowerPoint, project plan, whatever. PDF is ok, but original format preferred. Why do I like to gather information in an e-sorta way? Paper stacks up on my desk, fills up my file cabinets - it just gets in the way Paper is not searchable - I like to google my private knowledge base with Copernic…

Answering questions with questions is a quick path towards irrelevance

Why do some folks insist on answering questions with questions? Or, answering questions with roadblocks? It's not surprising when you hear IT complain about their inability to connect with the business, of not being included, etc. - and then demonstrate a style of investigation / requirements gathering / support / feedback that is a bit antagonistic. Business: How long would it take you to do X? IT: Why X? Why not Y? ... or IT: Why X? What are the…