Archive for category Good Books and Articles
Reuse, Recycle…and Leverage Your Current Investments
Posted by Rudolf Melik - Project Management Software Blog in Good Books and Articles, IT Management on December 4th, 2006
We enjoyed the article What Gartner is Telling Your Boss, which discusses Gartner’s view of the future of application development:
"The future of application development is not about programmer productivity," said [Matt Hoyle, Gartner Analyst] during the keynote presentation, "but in assembling functionality from components." While programming will not go away, he stressed, programming has decreasing importance in delivering excellence. "Assembling, buying, and extracting is an increasing part of what you need to do," he said. To be more agile and responsive, application development managers have to manipulate, orchestrate, and compose new business processes, using resources available from outside partners, third-party applications, Web services, and existing code components. [Dale Veccio, gartner analyst] asked, "Why would you ever code an app from scratch again? Why would you need to?"
Bloggers tended to focus on the implication that Gartner is advocating the use of open source code. But I think the bigger picture is that managing software and IT projects is not just about technology decisions. We have to do Project Execution and Governance better: by knowing which projects to do and which to kill.
Moreover, there has to be more emphasis on optimizing the investments the company has already made in infrastructure, technology and R&D. There has been a shift in emphasis in the marketplace from investing in the "next new thing" to better leveraging current investments.
Don’t Make Me Think
Posted by Rudolf Melik - Project Management Software Blog in Enterprise Software, Good Books and Articles on November 30th, 2006
Although this book isn’t new, it is an excellent read, and I recommend it to all our project managers who develop applications and have usability on their minds. The book discusses user interface and user experience design, and how software applications and web sites have to keep things simple, name things what they are, reduce clicks, simplify navigation. We at Tenrox used a lot of these concepts in redesigning the R9 user interface, and we intend to use even more of these principles in redesigning some of our frequently accessed features to make it faster for users to get things done: things like initiating new projects, creating new users, creating multiple client invoices, and other routine tasks.
The book is: Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Full Description on Amazon.com
New Study Validates Process Controls
Posted by Rudolf Melik - Project Management Software Blog in Business Process Management, Good Books and Articles, IT Management on November 21st, 2006
Here’s a frank and informative article in the latest CIO magazine about the differences between high-performing IT organizations and the rest: the bottom line is better controls, and real consequences for unauthorized changes within a project.
The article is here: http://www.cio.com/archive/111506/col_sch.html
CIO Magazine, "Are You In Control? Innovation demands discipline as much as it requires freedom." by Michael Schrage. November 15, 2006.
The article takes some very nice stats from a report by the IT Process Institute (buy the full report here). They amount to resounding support for the workflow-driven approach:
The findings quantified distinctions between IT shops that live for the average and the few that take process leadership seriously. Elite IT performers weren’t just two or three times better than median performers—they were seven or eight times better. High performers—roughly 13 percent of the 98 sampled—contributed on average eight times more projects, four and a half times more applications and software, four and a half times more IT services, and seven times more business IT changes. They implemented 14 more changes with half the failure rate.
And what separates these elite performers from the rest? Schrage explains in no uncertain terms:
Two controls towered over all others in impact and importance: Do you monitor systems for unauthorized changes? And are there defined consequences for intentional unauthorized changes? No ambiguity or nuance here. The key discriminator between the best and the rest was that elite performers rigorously monitored and punished unauthorized changes. They had situational awareness of change.
Schrage goes on to make some excellent comments about the value of control over change:
It’s not the work we’re supposed to do that undermines our productivity; it’s our black market economies of unauthorized changes—no matter how well intentioned or essential. We misunderstand the true enterprise costs of change.
As a firm believer in the value of process controls and well-managed workflows, I’m glad to see this validation come from the ITPI and CIO magazine.
The World is Flat
Posted by Rudolf Melik - Project Management Software Blog in Globalization, Good Books and Articles on November 10th, 2006
Thomas Friedman, the award-winning New York Times writer has written a great book entitled: “The World is Flat.” This book is part of the backdrop and rationalization as to why service organizations need Project Workforce Management Solutions. Here’s is part of a review from Publisher’s Weekly:
“Before 9/11, New York Times columnist Friedman was best known as the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, one of the major popular accounts of globalization and its discontents. Having devoted most of the last four years of his column to the latter as embodied by the Middle East, Friedman picks up where he left off, saving al-Qaeda et al. for the close. For Friedman, cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have finally obliterated all impediments to international competition, and the dawning ‘flat world’ is a jungle pitting ‘lions’ and ‘gazelles,’ where ‘economic stability is not going to be a feature’ and ‘the weak will fall farther behind.’ Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs, by contrast, will be empowered. The service sector (telemarketing, accounting, computer programming, engineering and scientific research, etc.), will be further outsourced to the English-spoken abroad; manufacturing, meanwhile, will continue to be off-shored to China. As anyone who reads his column knows, Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives who are his main sources that these developments are desirable and unstoppable, and that American workers should be preparing to ‘create value through leadership’ and ’sell personality.’ This is all familiar stuff by now, but the last 100 pages on the economic and political roots of global Islamism are filled with the kind of close reporting and intimate yet accessible analysis that have been hard to come by. Add in Friedman’s winning first-person interjections and masterful use of strategic wonksterisms, and this book should end up on the front seats of quite a few Lexuses and SUVs of all stripes.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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