In the early part of the year, we tracked our time as a group using timesheets. We don't use these to justify our payroll or anything, just an exercise to validate that we were properly apportioning our time across multiple demands. Also, we wanted to help explain why it takes more than one week of calendar time to complete one week of effort time. As I was scanning old emails, I came across the summary / findings note that I…
Technical people are often engineers at heart, and really want to see controlled processes in and around their computer systems. We see source code control, configuration management, and process documentation as ways to manage long term maintenance costs and deliver repeatable, reliable results from our systems. In the realm of ERP systems, this would seem to be a common and well-regarded mind set; however, the businesses supported by these systems often demand information transparency, process flexibility, and quick turnaround of…
My blogroll includes tech-focused blogs as well as general business sites (along with some humor). It's an interesting cross section, that allows me to see a wide variety of reactions to news such as MacTel, Office XML, Offshoring, and other things. The variety reminded me of an old thought exercise I led at a previous job, discussing CRM for the pharmaceutical industry and how it had so many meanings within the same relatively small group of people / departments. It's…
Over the last few days, I've been in a few vendor demos, trading partner reviews, product pitches, and project discussions, all reviewing complex systems or processes, and tools / software / services to help out. Some important, common, and somewhat random issues kept popping into my mind, all about trying to have a discussion about complex systems / interactions ... Always be mindful that if something was easy, we probably would have done it already. Be alert for things that…
Rothman suggests we use the term Defect, not Bug - as if Defect is a more honest / real word, and Bug is somehow more evasive, non-descript. Au contraire - my guess is that Ms. Rothman does not have a programming background! When you say to a Programmer that their software has a bug, they typically take great offense; I remember how fast a consultant turned from smooth professional to defensive techno-geek the instant I suggested their work product had…
I saw Stewart's article on customized software in ComputerWorld this week, and googled (Googled?) a bit more and found a pair of good posts from Scavo (Keller/AMR started it all), speaking of an apparent trend back to favoring custom-built software in business today. A few thoughts ... A classic blunder made by many corporate IT groups is to buy into the idea that custom software is easy. It's certainly fun - much easier to develop a brand new piece of…
A lot of talking with the team yesterday, and I have a sore throat because of it - but we covered some pretty key concepts, stuff that is hard to reconcile in many tech staffers' minds, but must be dealt with. One conversation covered this person's desire to be thought of / leveraged as "more than a programmer". "That's great!" was my response -"... then close the issues that are getting assigned to you - without programming!". Recently, I am…
(attrib) I was in a meeting yesterday - first time with this particular group of folks, all at same time, on this topic, although I had already established a working relationship with all. Anyway, subject matter was one that most of them had talked about at length over the past few weeks, but I was a new addition to the mix. Suffice it to say, I didn't have too much to add to the conversation, not until the very end…
We've faced this problem a few times, as we roll out a distributed application across a network of remote locations. A fairly typical challenge is to explain the impact of a technical architecture improvement in a relevant, meaningful way - without resorting to techno-jargon. A good approach includes: Keep it short - Too much detail and you will lose them. Find the balance between enough information to be valuable, but not so much as to be boring Focus on the…
The outgoing intranet was nice, in that it gave content owners the ability to control what was visible / available. Unfortunately, we've come to discover that a number of corporate services areas (Safety, HR, Transportation, etc.) in our organization used the intranet but never took part of the content management (CM) - it all came "from above". Basically, these folks are about to get a "crash course" in CM and Knowledge Management (KM), albeit in small bites. When you read…