Goal Tracking

I have been meaning to get my Microsoft certifications for some months now, but work has always taken priority. This can be said for a number of things I have been meaning to do.

I noticed that there were more and more goal tracking websites popping up online, so I thought I'd give one of them a go. It was pretty crappy, so moved onto another. After a few I managed to find one that was pretty good. So, if anyone out there on the Inter-web would like to see what my goals are, and how I'm tracking, check out my GoalForIt profile. This is the best one I've found http://www.goalforit.com. 

Business Process Improvement & Business Intelligence

Gartner has just released a report that highlights the business and technology priorities for senior enterprise executives. The article can be found here.

Following on from my previous blog post, it's encouraging to see that business process improvement is sitting at the top of the CIO's priorities. What is also interesting is that this has been the top priority since the survey began in 2005. All I can say is that this is generally very different from my own experiences in the industry (with the handful of companies I have work with).

"Senior enterprise executives recognize that IT's contribution to economic performance extends beyond managing expenditures. They expect IT to play a role in reducing enterprise costs, not merely with cost cutting but by changing business processes, workforce practices and information use."

Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=855612)

The report also shows that Business Intelligence tops the list as well. This has always been a passion of mine, getting the right information in front of the right people at the right time. That can have a big impact on the success of a company.

I think these will be the key areas of focus for companies in the current financial climate. Doing "more with less", improving business processes and providing timely business intelligence to management will enable companies to become more efficient and survive the current market.

Good business process before software solutions

This post is about a pretty basic concept. However, based on my experience over the last couple of years, I've decided to blog about it anyway. 

Unfortunately I have seen several examples of companies that choose software solutions BEFORE reviewing their business processes. Remember that a bad process is still a bad process when it’s automated. When I step into an organisation and start asking questions about their business processes, it’s amazing how often answers to these questions are difficult to come by. Why? Well, the basic answer is that each individual/department has different processes to achieve the same outcome. Lively discussions then ensue to determine which of these processes to use going forward. At this point the software analysis should stop and business analysis should take over. However, all too often this does not happen.

This is a difficult situation, as there is no immediate benefit to reviewing the business processes within a company. Consider this: Management in a particular division have a problem they want fixed, that’s why IT is involved. Management has decided that if the problem is fixed, the division will become more efficient. So just blaze away and install or develop something that will automate process XYZ (or whatever their problem is). But what if this process is common across different areas of the business? Is it IT's job to identify this? Or upper management within the company? I think it's BOTH.

I have worked in large companies where the IT management has been astute enough to identify these common areas and articulate the benefits of business processes reviews to the board or CEO (CIO if one exists). But it’s something that we need to keep in mind as IT professionals.

As an IT consultant, keeping the following principles in mind will help this problem:

1. Understand the business and what will make life EASIER for the end-users.
2. Review the Business Processes and recommend improvements if required.
3. Understand what can be gained from an IT solution (try to get some idea of ROI) before proposing any IT solutions.

Remember, step one should ALWAYS be to get the business processes correct BEFORE talking about IT solutions. Don’t simply throw technology at a problem because there is some perception that it will magically fix it. Fit the technology to the business needs, not vice versa.

Bitstrips.com

In a desperate attempt to try and de-stress, I've been playing around with a site called BitStrips.com. Here's my very lame first attempt:

TechEd 2008

A couple of weeks ago I attended TechEd in Sydney. This is the first time that I've been to TechEd and can say that I was really impressed. The theme at this year's TechEd was to Learn, Connect, Explore. The direction at the moment in the industry is all around SaaS (Software as a Service), or as Microsoft likes to call it "Software + Services". They have their "Live Mesh" platform to try and take advantage of this. The cloud is the future ... in the cloud we trust. Personally, I think it's kinda scary and comes along with a bunch of risks around security and availability (in Australia anyway).

 

Learn

Learn through the dozens of breakout sessions, hands-on labs and instructor led sessions. A great opportunity to hear about new technologies and build upon existing knowledge. We recieved 9 DVDs full of the presentations as they were presented in the North America TechEd. Here are the sessions I attended:

• Two pre-day training sessions on Microsoft BI.
• Not Just Spreadsheets: Microsoft Office and Excel As a Business Intelligence Development Platform.
• Career Development for Architects.
• Taking Your Application Design to the Next Level with Data Mining.
• Creating Solutions with the Business Data Catalog.
• Stop Searching... Find it! With Microsoft Enterprise Search.
• ASP.NET MVC – Should you care?
• Building Loosely Coupled Applications with Unity.
• Designing High Performance Cubes in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services.
• ADO.NET Data Services – The Zen of RESTfulness and the Art of “Astoria”.
• MDX for a SQL dude (Demystifying MDX).
• DEV210 The Hour of Power: 6 of the Best - Best of the Best in VS2008, Fx 3.5 inc SP1.
• Web Futures - the next 18 months.
• AJAX-Enable Your Windows Communication Foundation Services.
• Architectural Considerations for the ASP.NET MVC Framework.

Connect

The opportunity to Connect with other industry experts was also a key advantage of TechEd. I was able to meet some of the Microsoft people that I will be dealing with to boost our SharePoint and BI practices. It's good to know that we have "people on the inside" we can approach for leads and support in these areas. It was also good to hear that Microsoft acknowledges the amount of effort our CEO (Mark O'Malley) puts into the partner program. I think this is extreemly positive for DSC-IT as a company.

 

Explore

The opportunity to Explore the products and services offered by other companies was great. There were several booths in the exhibition space from a varying array of companies. Some of the more interesting products on display were tools to synchronise DEV, TEST and PROD SharePoint environments. There was also a good company that offered a solution to secure password storage. The difference about this product is that it could tell you what passwords an employee had access to and enable you to expire them immediately by integrating into AD. 

 

The Lighter Side

The food ... what can I say ... wow! There was plenty to choose from. While they only had one selection of Beer, I was quite happy with that and made the most of it (within reason of course:). The TechEd Party was also fantastic. It included a "side-show/Circus" themed environment with Side shows, pinball machines, Xbox consoles, Karts and comedians. I can see why people pay just to go to the TechEd party.