Project X Discussions

The Friday Drive

A long term colleague of mine and I have been finding ourselves talking on the drive home on Fridays over the last three weeks where we talk about a variety of interesting topics.  So for fun and in support of getting others viewpoints on the topic we decided to do a weekly podcast.

So stay tuned.  It will be posted at the end of the day at The Friday Drive so join us for a listen and then feel free to comment either on the post we will create at "The Friday Drive" blog.

Coffee Conversations CC#2 - Get the Customer the Data with IPEDO

This is the Second of Episode of Coffee Conversations with Stephen Hayward of Project X.

Today we will be talking with Tim Matthews, Co-Founder and VP Marketing from Ipedo in regards to:

• Enterprise Information Integration - introduction and where it sits in the Enterprise Architecture
• Data as a Service
• How it can enhance and enrich Data Governance

So please enjoy, feel free to comment and have a great day!

Download cc_2_enterprise_information_integration_v2.mp3

Our Podcast is available on iTunes as well as here for download

You can also go and visit Tim at his Blog

 

This is Tim by the way.

Presence Process & Lent

After having finished the process once I am trying to decide when to start again.  I usually do something during lent an extra something positive so I decided that I would start the process again.  I have found the process quite amazing.  I find my perceptions are changing but I still have strong negative charge.  I have to remind myself of the stages of change.  When I are trying to change, it can happen I intend to change but when the opportunity arises, I do the same old thing.  I have a choice, I can say "I'll never change!" or "that's the first stage of change".  Later I anticipate the opportunity and plan to do it differently but still play the old script.  Again a choice, "Never change!" or "Second stage".  Next stage is I anticipate and actually do the new script most of the time.  I now am at the third stage and the percentage of the time will increase but who's perfect.  The thing I must realize is that change is slow, and patience and persistence is important.  I have found that I really have become aware of these things that I put out there to teach me lessons.  I am listening to the messages and am ready to learn about Present Moment Awareness.  Stay tuned.

The Power of Three

I once worked for a guy that told me that to be successful I needed to do three things at work.  The first was the job I was hired to do (the compete job description) and excel at that and then two other things that helped the organization.

It never really dawned on me as to the Power of the Three.  At google they talk about doing your job, but taking 10% (I think that is the #) of your time to doing something innovative.  In my past iot was setting up or being a part of a social group - that ultimately helped me know people, relate better and have more fun.  Lead the roll out of training or CRM, which always helped me focus on what was core to the role I played and how to be more productive.

Now that I am helping lead Project X, my power of three is even more important, not just as much for me as for the people we bring aboard.  My new take is it should be a corporate cultural thing.  The following are some of the categories I think should be considered:

1. Your job - with enthusiasm
2. Evangelist - internally and externally - we all sell whether we know it or not
3. Productivity - do something that makes your organization more productive, this will increase profitability or decrease cost to customer or just help you in your organization
4. Innovation - Create your innovation value network, and spend time at it.  In this I mean give, share your knowledge expertise whatever and when you need it later on wow will you be surprised who is there to help you.
5. Community and Social Involvement - a great way to give back and get involved in the area you live.
6. Make work fun - we spend more time with our customers and fellow employees than we generally do with our family (awake time) so we need to ensure we have the best opportunity to enjoy our work
7. SWAT Team - create your own swat team to take on a problem and fix it - six sygma, whatever, but make it go away
8. Invest in the Customer - take some time to better understand their business, walk their stores, talk to store managers, try and see the picture outside of your project.

These are just some thoughts, so please feel free to comment some more and I will add them to the list.

Blog Highlight

Those of you who know me know that I like to follow certain people and really try and learn from them.

One of the people is Guy Kawasaki (his blog and a specific great overview of what he is doing) .  I have read his books and especially remember him from a trip to San Francisco where he was on a morning TV show and talking about his approach to business and technology.

That was a long time ago, but Guy is back with a vengence spreading his pearls of wisdom and looking to take the topics from his book and clearly from his life to us and allowing us to interact and start a conversation around these things.

When I first started reading his stuff, I was blown away on how concise and simple his thoughs are.  He has done a great job of using this forum to update the thoughts from his books and bring some of the learning since the publication into the conversation.  This is a real great example of how blogging can take an animate item (the book) and create a real conversation around the topic.

I hope he keeps it up and the comments start to bring even more insight into his posts.

The Read/Write Web - the Evoluition to Software as a Service

The evolution of the ASP seems to be a very hot topic.  We all know and embrace SalesForce.com and it has been around for a while.  But this seems to really have taken on a new meaning when wrapping it into just Software-as-a-service.

The reason I bring this up is that with the maturity of the web and the emergence of some new technology standards (AJAX, SOA among many ... as a blog I once read the nice thing about standards is there are so many to choose from) is allowing a new evolution into the heart of productivity tools with the Web Office Suite (a great discussion is happening here).  One of the new ones that has a lot of buzz is Windows Live and there is hype that Google is also going to have something.

The reaon I find this interesting, is that if these productivity tools can be done in service mode why not other items - Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, and ERP (Oh wait that is already available).  These are some heavy hitting core process support applications.  So who is going to embrace this stuff.  Initial thinking was always around the little guy (Small Medium Business) that wants industrial strength apps on a small budget - yes that works, but what about the larger organization?  I know of some very big organizations that use SalesForce as their core Sales engine - and that is some pretty sacred information.

So where is this going to go?

I'm thinking of two driving thoughts:

1. The fractionalization of cost.  Moving a big lump sum that has to be amortized on a companies books has a good play if you get best in class solutions for the same or a fraction more than that amortized cost without the headaches that will occur internally.
2. Focus on Leveraging the Value of the Application not the Application.  So in ERP, the application brings only so much competitive value, it is what you do with the functionality you get.  Or in Business Intelligence it is the BI not the data that drives core value.

Also take a look at MIP's scan as he is always got some insight.  Just some thoughts, I would love to hear what you think.

Return on Investment does it exist

I was reading my regular assortment of information today and ran across a great blog from Joe McKendrick.  In the article Joe talks about the mythe of ROI in the motivation of IT projects.  The hardest part of figuring out any return is to properly capture present state and then be able to capture the effect of the change on the business.

As he mentions, there are many drivers in business that are hard to find a direct return.  One of my favorites was always "Customer experience - do they really buy more or cost less".  Indirect value propositions are hard to monitor.  If I send a coupon and ask for the code, I can track the purchase, but would I have bought anyway?  Don't get me wrong I am a HUGE believer in customer experience - it is the Brand - the experience of value.

The challenge is that when someone finds a business value that is a hot button in support of corporate strategy, often they squeek projects in that are not really driving the value - just a favorite way to get projects approved.

As many acronyms and buzz words get invented, accepted and overused we need to be careful.  But more importantly we need to educate everyone in the value chain how this works.

Chief Data Wrangler

Never heard about, not surprised - I just made it up.

But it really talks to the role that seems to be missing in most organizations.  We seem to find people who are Directors of Business Intelligence both in IT and the Business.  But there is no intelligence without data and the architects seem to be saddled with the task.

So what would this person do... roughly get the data into one view so the BI folks can use it.

1. Data Warehouse Governance & Stewardship - enact guiding principles
2. Data Quality
3. Get the Data into the warehouse (ETL / ELT / ??)
4. Data Model
5. Metadata - make sure it is there
6. Give the user a view of the data with proper performance (EII, Views, Aggregates)

The job simply is to get the data into third normal form (or close to it) for use with good performance to the business.  Get the data in the hands of the user.

First Time Thru Presence Process

I have now completed the first time thru the Process and it is has been quite an experience.  I am still a babe in the process.  However I expect I will feel that way forever, as it is really a journey not a destination.   One of my big insights is that most of my perceptions are really reflections of my beliefs as opposed to what is happening outside me.  I often think things are not the way they should be.  One of my friends recently called the situation he was in "Bizarre".  For me I often react to these type of situations by thinking about how it "should" be.  (I think I am full of shoulds.)However the Presence process tells me the situation is what it is and treat it as a messenger.  So what is the message.  The message is personal and related to my phyical, mental and emotional develoment.  I often say to myself "it isn't fair" and have a silent temper tantrum.  Then I react angrily or fearfully.  However if I can get to neutralize my negative emotional charge and see that the anger or fear is related to my beliefs and not this situation, which just is, then I can respond with love and caring.  That is a big step and one that is part of my journey. 

I am planning now to repeat the process and am not sure how to do that.  My plan is to take a week to integrate things and then start week one again.  I find each time I read a section I see it with new eyes and am clearly ready for some new fodder for the mill.

 

Coffee Conversations CC#1 - Innovation with MIP

This is a first of Episode of Coffee Conversations.

Today we will be talking with Michael Ianni-Palarchio (MIP)  in regards to:

• Innovation
• Approach to client success
• Focus on Business not Technology.

So please enjoy, feel free to comment and have a great day.

Our Podcast is available on iTunes as well as here for download

Download 01_innovation_with_mip_1.mp3.