Project X Discussions

CoffeeCAST - #54 - Process

 Welcome to the 54th CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X Ltd.

I hope all is well with everyone.  I have asked Michael Ianni-Palarchio to join me today where we will be discussing:

1. Misalignment between scope estimation and the truth
2. • Lowball Estimates and Change Request to death
   • Too high, not enough intimate knowledge and too much worst case
3. Working within Customers delivery processes
4. Clearfit - A way to see your new hires in a different light

54 CoffeeCAST #54 - Process

Listen in and we hope you enjoy and more importantly, hope you join in the conversation.  So drop a comment in the blog or send me an email and share your thoughts on the topic.

The audiocast is available on iTunes (as a Podcast) or here for download.  Have a great day and join the conversation.

Communication, Understanding and Testing

Testing is often the ugly step sister of IT.  So it is often marginalized and sometimes forgotten.

Lately I have seen the opposite effect and that scares me as much as the other.  One of the indicators is in communicating what testing is required.  For me this is the dreaded word "Regression Test".

As systems evolve and the evolution of object oriented programming and service oriented architecture (SOA) evolve into the enterprise we need a new way to communicate the requirements for testing.  Let's take an example...

CoffeeCAST - CC#29 - Working with Vendors and Technology

Welcome to the 29th CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X.  I have been having a good weekend and near the end of last week, I sat down with our friend MIP to talk about some experiences of late on working with vendors and technology in general.

So we sat down in a Starbucks at Bayview Avenue and chatted about some of our thoughts.  It largely circled around communication, but listen in as we talk about some experiences with You Tube, Bloglines and some others.

Download cc_29_working_with_vendors_and_tech.mp3

So we hope you had a great labour day weekend.  It's back to school for the kids, so be careful when driving.

Listen in and we hope you enjoy and more importantly, hope you join in the conversation.  So drop a comment in the blog or send me an email and share your thoughts on the topic.

The Podcast is available on iTunes or here for download.  Have a great day and join the conversation.

CoffeeCAST - CC#28 - Disruption, Evolution and Change

Welcome to the 28th CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X.  Oh my god get ready to put those white shoes away it is almost labour day.  So it is a lovely day here and Labour Day is almost upon us.

With all the activity over the last couple of weeks I have done some thinking on disruption and what it does to us personally and at work.  That's how we came to today's topic.

In today's episode I talk about the three pillers of People, Process and Technology and how disruption helps to drive evolution and change.  Some of the talking points cover:

• Sourcing - In-source, Out-Source, Global-Source, Offshore
• Disruptive Innovation
  • Web 2.x - Google's new Google Apps among others
  • Technology
    • Appliances (Netezza and DATAllegro)
    • Business Process Modelling (BEA Aqualogic, Casewise and others)
    • Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

This is not about the dusruption but the attitude to embrace the learning and build the internal capacity to change and evolve.

Download cc_28_disruption_change_and_evolution.mp3

So I hope you have a nice coffee in your hand as I have a home brewed Starbucks.  Listen in and we hope you enjoy and more importantly, hope you join in the conversation.  So drop a comment in the blog or send me an email and share your thoughts on the topic.

The Podcast is available on iTunes or here for download.  Have a great day and join the conversation.

Global Delivery Models

With the continued growth and evolution of the global delivery model I thought I would go back to some thoughts that have always been bantered back and forth in regards to vendor approach to this sort of environment.  For the sake of this discussion let's create three buckets of Systems Development Company:

Local
These are focused solely in providing consulting and services from locally available resources.  These folks have a focus and are being squeezed by the offshore model to find ways of dealing with the low cost delivery models.

Offshore
These are the pureplay offshore vendors whose solution starts with move to the 70-80% offshore and 30-20% onsite model and that is how they view the market.  These have been in the past the Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Satyam type organizations

Globally Integrated
These are the global powerhouses who at one time were focused on delivering locally for projects, but had global footprints and are now focusing on also delivering via remote work teams.  Examples are Accenture, IBM, EDS, CGI, BearingPoint and so forth.

CoffeeCAST - CC#26 - Organizational Thinking

Welcome to the 26th CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X.  It has been a hectic week so we are starting a little late... and yes you are with me again today. 

I think you will find today covers some interesting topics.  Having followed the writting of Robert Schaffer in Rapid Results, I found myself reading some of another Master's (sorry Maister's) thoughts David Maister.  So under the main thread of a topic we will talk about organizational thinking.  Here is what we are going to chat about:

• David Maister's blog posts over the past little bit:
  • Can we copy our heros
  • How do we really make decisions
    Michael Lovaglia, (a professor at the University of Iowa)
  • Doing it through a blanket
• Organizational Challenge - sounds a bit like guiding principles for Rapid Results
  
  • Build vs buy
  • Global pressure
  • Working together

Download cc_26_organizational_thinking.mp3

So I hope you have a nice coffee in your hand as I have a home brewed Starbucks.  Listen in and we hope you enjoy and more importantly, hope you join in the conversation.  So drop a comment in the blog or send me an email and share your thoughts on the topic.

The Podcast is available on iTunes or here for download.  Have a great day and join the conversation.

Ownership and Responsibility

In this weeks CoffeeCAST I mentioned Governance and Oversight as it relates to sourcing strategies.  I was in a meeting right after that and talking with a client where we were talking about ownership and responsibility of actions and results.  Take for example:

• Your auditor tells you you should do something.  Who takes reposibility for the result.  Enron is a great example and this has changed the way public organizations work.  But ultimately if a CEO signs off is one thing, but does the person responsible for the audit or accounting change have responsibility or can they say to the CEO on his way to jail - "the auditors told us ...."
• Your outsourcer for IT tells you to architect a data warehouse like this, the data model is this and we will move the data like that.  This may be to complex for the client to understand because of the technical nature, but the outsourcer being smart has gotten you to sign off on the requirements and design documents.  But at the end of the day it is not what you needed.

There are many other examples and this is not an easy to deal with situation, but let's talk about some guiding principles:

1. This is the client's business and they own the result - so need to be involved and understand
2. You can not delegate ownership of the result
3. We need to be mutually focused on the result and thus the deliverables underneath them
4. Build into the plan the proper governance and oversight - this is not a work breakdown schedule management task or a risk management task but an involved task
5. Decide how to deal with issues that are beyond your area of expertise
6. Empower the team and support them
7. This is not a process for pointing fingers and blame, but for ownership
8. If you do not have the resources in-house, bring in an objective 3rd party to help you
9. Build this capcaity in-house as ultimately this is your business
10. Work to understand.

An interesting start to a difficult topic, so on Monday I will add a piece on pricing models and how that changes behaviour.

CoffeeCAST - CC#25 - Mind Shift

Welcome to the 25th CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X.  We are just coming off a long weekend in Canada (Simcoe day in Ontario).  A great weekend and a time to develop some discussion ideas.  Today I fly solo and discuss the idea of the ability to do a mind shift.  So in today's episode I am hoping to open some dialogue on some observations I have had over the past 18 months and find challenge the success our customers and consultants have.

• Technology or Business
  • Results
  • IT
    • Centralized Data
    • Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
    • AJAX
    • Offshore Outsourcing
• Sourcing Strategies
  • Failing to deliver on the promises in the sales cycle and the real result the business is looking for
  • Governance, Oversight
  • Guiding Principals
• Offshoring
  • Gaining momentum even in Canada
  • Growth (IT, BPO, ITOPS)
  • But how do you get the results

Download cc_25_mind_shift.mp3

So I hope you have a nice coffee in your hand as I have for a change a home brewed Starbucks.  Listen in and we hope you enjoy and more importantly, hope you join in the conversation.  So drop a comment in the blog or send me an email and share your thoughts on the topic.

The Podcast is available on iTunes or here for download.  Have a great day and join the conversation.

Software as a Service and Business Intelligence

Colin White over at the B*eye network has a great article describing an evolution to Software as a Service 2.0 (Saas 2.0).

He starts by breaking down types of services into three types:

1. On-Damand Software Purchasing
2. On-Demand IT SOA
3. On-Demand Application Services

He then goes on to define his newly created term:

Two key characteristics of SaaS 2.0 are:

• Network and Web-based access to commercial software computing services where the processing is done on a third-party server, rather than at each customer’s location.
     
• A tenant-based pricing model for hardware, software, administration and consulting services.

And then after that he goes on to talk about:

• The Business Case for SaaS - in this he even compares this to the ASP model
• How Will SaaS effect BI - does a great job to list BI tool vendors who have gone and opened SaaS offerings to the public, Informatica, Business Objects, SAS, OCO, and Host Analytics

I thought this was a great article and does some justice to the evolution of SaaS as a going concern alternative.  I am going to ask Colin why he did not delve into the EDW as a SaaS opportunity.  I am curious as to why we seem to be the only ones developing this...

A Visit to India - CC#14 - CoffeeCAST

Welcome to the 14th Episode of the CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X.

This week we are podcasting from the Bloor and Jarvis having just finished a Senge Circle meeting.  I still have most of my Starbucks Venti red-eye and Mark has a new cup of tea.  Mark Dymond of IBM is back with me today to talk about his recent trip to India where he was visiting his development team and a third-party provider of his.

1. General Impressions - Delhi, Pune, Mombai (Bombay)
2. Quality of skills and output
3. Strengths and Weknesses
4. Best Practices
   - Communication
   - Training (job shadowing)
5. Capability, Attitude and Presnece
6. Campus Experience

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

Download cc_14_trip_to_india_mark.mp3

Our Podcast is also available on iTunes as well as here for download.  Or come on over to our website at http://www.pxltd.ca.