Connect The Dots

Its been quite a while since I have updated the blog - but here is a quick update on work I am doing outside of my day to day project management and research - the Rocco Rossi campaign for Mayor. Highlighting a great team effort and also a journey I have been taking learning the power of social media and integration with the web. For those interested my role is Co Chair for IT and New Media for the campaign. There are a lot of team members who deserve special credit for their involvement on the campaign but that will be at another time. The RR campaign has achieved a significant leadership over the competitors so far see this ...

Recently I have conducted a research survey (on-line) aimed at understanding documentation in IT. Documentation is certainly not glamorous - but it may be the least expensive way to increase productivity. In many of the situations where I do triage work and develop computing models, the striking thing has been either the absence of a picture of the complete system, or partial "individual" views. In my research interviews most respondents literally rolled their eyes when they were asked how well documentation was done! So I decided to more formally research how documentation is perceived, executed and the value (or loss of value) from not having it. It's an on-line survey and a number of organizations and individuals have responded based ...

You may have seen the CNN 3D (magic wall) and holographic show on the US election night. This resulted in a mixed reception on-line. There were a range of predictable comments: - From "that's cool" to completely wacky - my favorite is "this is pure retro Star Wars" (see Techcrunch). In addition to the holograms - CNN created a virtual model of Washington and a representation of the inside of the US senate, all in 3D. Kind of puts my own models to shame! Not all of it worked, but the reporters like all good users, didn't panic and persevered (mostly). (I imagine its a bit like a frozen screen on a PC except having it happen in ...

BPMN,UML,MDD,DSL,MOF,OMG, YAAaaaa! - I cheated YAA stands for Yet Another Acronym! Modeling methods for application software appears rife with different views on how software should be designed and documented. Or at least until now, as Microsoft has joined the open source consortium in this space - OMG - The Object Management Group. According to Forrester in a recent report this development hopefully means two seperate camps will be united. Microsoft did not support UML v2(Uniform Mark Up Language) favoring DSLs (Domain Specific Languages) - whereas OMG supported UML. A DSL is essentially a competing form of notation that is, as it states, domain centric (think database modelling or similar approaches that ...

If you are not familiar with Visio Cafe - its a great resource for computer stencils (think Powerpoint shapes except smarter). VSD Grafx Inc, that supports this open source site - provides many stencils of configurable computer objects to most of the main systems vendors today including IBM, EMC, HP and a host of others. I asked Trevor Foster a founder of VSD what their business model was and he indicated that clients pay VSD to build standard computing visio objects for them. They did this so that sales and presales engineering teams could rapidly build architectures and put quotes together. We discussed the interesting idea that in many cases ...

I have just finished reading Chris Anderson's (Editor of Wired) excellent book - "The Long Tail" and it really opened my mind to the profound change in economics that is taking place online and how this will affect main stream business. The Long Tail premise is that the 80/20 rule no longer holds because some businesses may sell more individual or "one off" products in TOTAL than the usual top sellers -ie the top 20% of items sold (the hits)account for less than all the one off items. In this case a very large number of people buy a small amount of unique products. Anderson's premise is that when there is unlimited choice this is the ...

The following tip on project management is important both for senior managers and executives and for those in the business of execution. However to explain it requires a bit of technical discussion about the feature and the software concerned. The explanation below also relates to the common computing model framework which is the subject of my research. So I recently downloaded a very cool new feature in Microsoft Visio called "WBS Modeller Add In". This enables a Microsoft Project Plan to be imported into Visio as a set of objects that retain their hierarchical linkages/relationships. In other words an automated import tool to view a project plan as a picture like everything else in Visio. Now ...

As more of my work involves now the day to day use of a common computing model - I thought readers would find it interesting to compare the concept to the Building industry who already have a similar process of their own. Its called BIM - Building Information Modeling. BIM involves creating essentially a 3D replica but embedding within it all the relevant building information including the project plan. In other words its cross referenceable. It is ironic that the Building Industry are using computers (essentially Autocad and similar) to build models - and that my research and recommendations are for the IT industry to adopt more formal modelling! As a further note it is important to ...

(University of Toronto) then its good enough to practically apply to I.T.! Roger Martin's excellent, recently published book "The Opposable Mind" is all about integrative thinking and how this capability fosters successful leadership. His argument revolves around the concept of our different mental models and how differences in interpretation lead to varied outcomes. By being able to appreciate your own mental model but also others - new ideas and innovative solutions become more possible. There is a different but strong parallel here for IT. In the research we have done to date with Ivey on developing a common computing framework - we are building the argument around the same premise as Martin. Martin gives an interesting example where two managers go on ...

Someone once said (and I forget who it was) that the downside of great project management is that it can simply accelerate disaster. The point of this comment is not that there is anything wrong with project management, (in fact of course its indispensable) its that if the end product is flawed or poorly defined - project management isn't going to be a panacea. I think that there is a lot of faith put into PMI style rigor and discipline - almost as though constant attention to detail will enable the team to see and act with great wisdom - with method as the "saviour". Indeed I have seen via constant, in fact daily, conference call meetings - teams finally realize ...