This post picks up on Parts 1 to 9 and examines the ninth of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.

I’ve posted before on organizational silos (see Bustin’ Silos with the Role Bomb!), the inefficiencies they introduce and how silos tend to dampen the magic of innovation and collaboration.  “If only the left hand knew what the right hand was doing” is a familiar cry of woe!

The Promise of Business Process Reengineering

Deming’s 9th Point in many ways foreshadows the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) movement of the 1990’s with its end-to-end business processes (e.g., order-to-cash, hire-to-retire) and process management discipline cutting across traditional organizational boundaries.  BPR almost always leveraged information technology to gain efficiencies in terms of speed and resources – sometimes in innovative ways, often shifting work to the customer.

Unfortunately, in spite of the promise, there were quite a number of horrible BPR failures, especially in the early 1990’s.  Many early failures were associated with the so-called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) monster software packages that often accompanies BPR efforts.  But, there have also been some spectacular successes and ERP together with at least some form of process management are invariably at the heart of them.

Matrix Management

Process Management led organizations (that were not already there) towards the discipline of matrix management.  For some organizations, having more than two “bosses” (over-simplifying the situation enormously) represents too great a culture shift.  As such, the inertia associated with traditional hierarchies, silo behaviors and limited collaboration tends to overwhelm moves towards cross-departmental or cross-geographical boundaries.   Some companies (J&J comes to mind) seem to manage really well with complex operating company and market structures.  For them, matrix management, while never without its frustrations as with any management system, works well and is effective.  They have established the tools and disciplines to ensure clear lines of accountability together with a reasonably entrepreneurial spirit.

Is Collaboration a Tool to Break Down Departmental Barriers?

Web 2.0 promises to take collaboration to new levels – both within the organization and across its ecosystem. The conundrum, however, is:

• Web 2.0 tools and technologies can help break down organizational boundaries
• Organizational silos inhibit the institutionalization of collaborative behaviors

In other words, organizations that are already collaborating well across organizational boundaries are better positioned to exploit Web 2.0 than those with strong organizational silos.  I believe some proficiency with matrix management is necessary for success with cross-enterprise collaboration.  Given that, and with a thoughtful deployment of Web 2.0 tools with clarity of the strategic intents for the collaboration initiative, I believe Dr. Deming would be delighted to see the possibilities inherent in the world of Web 2.0, and its potential for “breaking down barriers.”

In the past my presentation of business level requirements has involved walking the business through the 80 pages of UML use cases and watching them glaze over after 10 minutes. I was wanting them to understand what they were signing off on but this was not the right way to present the material to that audience. I was finishing up a project recently and was asked to present our teams’ findings, requirements specification and design to the Director group.

My project was to develop a consolidated reporting tool that would bring together 6 different program data sets. So I took a user centred design approach and incorporated a lot of the Agile artefacts that I had developed on projects over the least three years and used the IA tools I had learnt from Matt, my IA mentor.

I started with face-to-face consultations and workshoped the needs and wants of the service user who were required to supply reports. I also talked to internal users who would analyse and summarise the reports for the Branch’s policy decision makers.   We decided to use Personas, want maps and process maps to present our findings about what the users really wanted and then used the site map and a prototype to show how the system would look and feel.

The presentation went extremely well as the Directors were taken through the process and had the visual clues to show them what the user experience would be. So why was this presentation approach successful? I think it was because my Agile documentation tends to be very visual as I find that my audience like to see how the design and the system will work and need to be brought along the journey. In my recent presentation I told the story through the eyes of the users and found this was a very effective way to present my deliverables.

Here are my top 5 tips for presenting Agile deliverables:

1. Establish and Communicate the Purpose: On my project, the service users clearly wanted a system that would help them manage and plan their day-to-day service business, not just a tool to use for reporting back to the funding Branch. I presented our findings from the stakeholder consultations and then presented the 6 Personas to demonstrated our understanding of these 6 key user groups. I told their story by presenting scenarios and explained why they wanted what they wanted from the system. My key message was that the system users wanted a management tool, not a reporting tool. By clearly presenting this purpose and demonstrating through personas and user stores, the Directors understood that this change would mean a win/win at implementation time as the burden of data entry for services would be lessened if there was something in it for them – namely useful management reports.

2. Use Visual Artefacts to Display Requirements and Design: The Personas were a very powerful tool to show what the archetypal users of the system wanted and how the groups differed in what they required. We displayed the primary, secondary and tertiary user needs in a want map and this helped to show the key difference and commonalities of wants across the varied stakeholders.The process maps showed how the different groups would interact with the system and how we would help them through the process and streamlining the process and reduce duplication of information. the Prototype helped to show how automation and integration of data would decrease data entry burden and also capture information that could be used to aid their management and planning.

By presenting deliverables as user scenarios and showing the findings through use of personas and want maps, the Directors were able to see the value in responding to the needs of the services as this would in the long run gain acceptance and quick wins for the system implementation. Walking this audience through Use Case after Use Case, would have missed the mark with this group as it would have been too detailed and technical and would not have given them the same feel for the concept of what the users wanted.

3. Understand your Audience: My presentation was aimed at the business users so I needed them to understand their needs so i could tailor my presentation to meet their needs. I needed to understand who were the key players? Who were the Influencers and Decision makers? What did they want from this system? What was the relationships between the different stakeholders? This was difficult as it was a short project (only 10 weeks) and I had little direct contact with some of the key players. therefore i walked closely with my business product owner to ensure he saw the deliverables in progress and has a chance to comment prior to them being presented to the Directors and Executives. I sought his guidance on how to handle the meeting, the dynamics of the stakeholders involved and walked him through the key messages. This preparation meant that I could frame the deliverables in a way that would hit the mark for this audience.

4. Understand the Business Context: Presenting to an audience when you don’t understand their business does not end well for the presenter. In conveying understanding of requirements for Business and Users, I believe it is important to know the business context. I did my research and preparation before the meeting and asked myself:

• What are the key drivers for this change?
• What processes are involved?
• What are the internal or external environmental constraints or opportunities out there for this group?

Once you know the context, demonstrate that you understand  the business needs and vision, them demonstrate how your solution will meet that need.

5. No Surprises: In the past I have been reluctant to show my work in progress as I wanted it near complete before i would share it (as the virgo perfectionist in me wanted to make sure it was right). In Agile, I have embraced this skinny solution concept and am now comfortable with starting with a skinny version, and fleshing it out as the work progresses. As I would finish a piece of thinking about users, processes or design, I would share these artefacts with the core project team, the key business product owner and then refine. This iterative approach helped my target audience to get a feel for what the deliverable would look like and meant that  when it was being presented, it was not a new concept, just a more refined and validated version of what they had seen earlier. Remember that you are presenting your requirements design solution, not telling a joke, so sending material out beforehand as pre reading will not “spoil the punch line”. If you feel people may miss the point of your deliverable without you there to narrate, then allow for their questions at the end rather than take questions throughout the presentation.

I was recently talking with the president of a SMB, and during that conversation he mentioned some technologies he was thinking about implementing to improve some of his internal processes.

It is a constant refrain.

Technology Takes Last Place

Technology should be a distant last place in your considerations.

Technology is a tool that can be used by people.

A tool used by people to generate business results by following business processes.

Read these two reviews by John Caddel, and Bob Sutton referencing the same study on improving medication processes in hospitals. To quote Mr. Caddel;

I’ve seen both these situations in action: the ability of front-line personnel to understand and fix problems with the processes they use, and the effectiveness of often-overlooked simple and low-tech solutions.

The SMB Takeaway

Technology tools can help standardize, they can help speed up existing business processes. But if those processes don’t even exist right now. Don’t think (or let vendors convince you) that a software tool will be a magic bullet that can do it all for you.

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Photo Credit bunchofpants via flickr

It is a good idea to examine your business processes from time to time. Processes such as how order information flows from sales personnel to warehouse or how you decide if a customer receives terms, is COD or prepay.  If you haven’t examined your business processes lately, there is probably room for improvement.

If we look hard, all of our companies have several key processes and perhaps dozens of ancillary ones–all either directly making your company money or supporting the infrastructure that allows your company to make money. The goals of examining the individual processes should be:

1. Save time,
2. Save money, and/or
3. Improve some outcome  (such as information, throughput, accuracy, etc.)

I recommend starting by taking your current process and very carefully document each individual component into a flowchart. The most effective way to do this would be as a team with those that are involved in the process being examined. I like using Microsoft Visio (you can download the current version from the Microsoft website for a free 60-day trial). Make sure you use the different flow chart shapes for the different components (like processes, decisions, documents, data) and map out all possible variables.

If done thoroughly, just the act of examining the steps as closely as needed to create the flowchart will begin to give you and your team ideas of how you might improve. In addition, consider these areas:

1. Technology – is there a way you can apply technology to improve it in some way (i.e. new software, PDF instead of paper or fax, email notifications, etc.)?
2. Duplication of effort – is there a place where the same steps are duplicated by more than one person?
3. Consolidation – are there related tasks that can be rolled up into one step or done by one person instead of several?
4. Sequence – can a decision or step be made earlier in the process that will make things simplier later on (or visa versa)?
5. Trimmed – are there steps that were needed in the past but have become superfluous?

After you and your team figure out your new and improved process, make sure you diagram it in a flowchart.  Ideally you will have some metrics that can be examined to quantify the improvements that you have made.

I have successfully employed this process on a number of occasions with one of the end results being that we can now handle four times the sales volume with the same number of back office managers and staff–with a lot less errors.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas that might help us or a reader, please do not hesitate to comment.

In my last article I hinted about investigating the use of an open source tool in support of my current employment.  I won’t go into details about the use case itself but I will gladly describe the tool and its potential.  First, a little background.

The Need

As noted in previous articles, a large part of my work the past several years has been in information management, specifically product and application configuration.  I’ve so far had the pleasure of leading and supporting work on two major enterprise rollouts of workflow solutions, each employing different commercial offerings and approaches to implementation.

The first project addressed a huge gap in product data and change management for consumer products development.  PTC Windchill was selected for the workflow solution based on its own strengths and helped by the fact that PTC product engineering applications were already in use.

The next project at a later employer involved replacing a claims handling application with a true process workflow solution.  Serena Business Mashup (SBM) was selected over competing products due to its rich feature set and seemingly unlimited extensibility.  I found the development environment (Mashup Composer) to be flexible, powerful and intuitive.

Both projects were very successful in streamlining and improving the ability of stakeholders to view end-to-end processes and manage events in their domains.  The commercial products involved proved their value although expenses were certainly significant.

An Open Alternative

In my current employment I am once again faced with the need to improve management of an enterprise activity, except that the prevailing economic decline prevents the sort of corporate funding that had been required for the other two projects.  This led me to search for low cost or even free solutions.

I found several tools that looked promising, but just about every search highlighted one in particular: the open source ProcessMaker.  Glowing write-ups such as this one by Python Developer’s Journal gave the impression that this free tool just might be close enough to WindChill or SBM to significantly improve our change management process.

The Short Take

ProcessMaker is 100% web-based and managed at popular open source hoster SourceForge.  The PM website states that its code “… is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3”.  It is provided in Windows and Linux versions.

I downloaded and installed the latest Windows version (1.2-2865) to my work laptop running XP.  The installation included MySQL and the Apache web server.  The first installation attempt hung up on the Apache portion at the end, but the second try went smoothly.  I’m not sure what happened (or didn’t happen) the first time.

I’ve barely explored what ProcessMaker can do and yet so far I am impressed.  While its mashups have not yet reached the number that one can access for Serena’s offerings, the same potential is there and hopefully the open source community is already at work developing more to be shared.  ProcessMaker supports Web Service Definition Language (WSDL), enabling a process developer to integrate numerous off-the-shelf applications that provide similar access.

The interface is clean and fairly easy to navigate.  However, I could see immediately that I’ll have to read the documentation and/or follow tutorials before being able to develop a useful process model.  Still, by sheer intuition alone I was able to create a new user, associate him with a group, install a sample weather report mashup and run the activity successfully.  This speaks well for the UI design.

I did find some minor but obvious phrasing issues in some areas, possibly reflecting ProcessMaker’s international heritage (Colosa has offices in New York, Bolivia and Peru and partners with a Danish IT firm) but they were not showstoppers.  Indeed, even in my untrained fumbling I did not run into anything that raised any real concerns.

ProcessMaker has recently brought data table creation and management to its set of features, bringing it closer to its commercial peers.  I’m eager to test this particular addition and see how it stacks up against Mashup Composer’s robust equivalent.

Bottom Line

 WindChill was the first purely Internet-architectured data management and collaboration tool, so by now (version 9.1) it’s very mature.  Too much time has passed since I worked with WindChill so I couldn’t do a post mortem justice.  I do recall that it easily handled everything we threw at it and integrated well with our other enterprise systems… SAP, BPCS et al.  It’s strictly a commercial offering.

Serena’s Business Mashup solution certainly has the power to wire together any silos across an enterprise landscape.  Serena has taken a hybrid approach in this space, offering a closed commercial product supported by a growing collection of popular user-developed mashups.

ProcessMaker, however, is completely free and open so that the developer community can create and push upstream additions and improvements not only to mashups but also the core product.  Colosa, the group behind ProcessMaker, charges only for training, hosting and other support.

There’s nothing wrong with PTC’s and Serena’s commercialization of course but lately I’m coming to believe more and more that ProcessMaker’s open mode is that of the future… assuming of course it reaches the critical mass necessary to attract enough mashup developers.  My initial take is that it definitely has the potential.

I plan to continue exploring that potential and expect to do at least one more general follow-up once I’m more familiar with the product… hopefully soon!

Everybody talks about it: add social features to your software to survive the next analyst call or customer visit as they are reading it all over the place and they will ask you. But, now just a simple question: can your system just publish a command…or more friendly a task? For instance, now an order is published, we can collaborate, we could “twitter” it and accompany it till cash is received. All “hugging” features, but can your system say: “hey, here an order, get it approved !”. So no hugging anymore, but a simple but important command! Why is that important? Having systems giving pro-actively tasks will enable a new way to do workflow: I call it Worflow 2.0. Procedures and things to do are not driven by hard coded API, annoying monitoring engines that make your transactional system die, but an event-driven style of workflow based on commands / tasks. Stay tuned to learn more about Workflow 2.0, your worflow in the cloud

Dr Yogesh Malhotra serves on the Faculty of Management Information Systems at the Syracuse University

Technologists never evangelize without a disclaimer: ‘‘Technology is just an enabler.’’ True enough – and the disclaimer discloses part of the problem: enabling what? One flaw in knowledge management is that it often neglects to ask what knowledge to manage and toward what end. Knowledge management activities are all over the map: building databases, measuring intellectual capital, establishing corporate libraries, building intranets, sharing best practices, installing groupware, leading training programs, leading cultural change, fostering collaboration, creating virtual organizations – all of these are knowledge management, and every functional and staff leader can lay claim to it. But no one claims the big question: why? (Tom Stewart in The Case Against Knowledge Management, Business 2.0, February 2002).

A comprehensive review of theory, research, and practices on knowledge management develops a framework that contrasts existing technology-push models with proposed strategy-pull models. The framework explains how the ‘‘critical gaps’’ between technology inputs, related knowledge processes, and business performance outcomes can be bridged for the two types of models. Illustrative case studies of real-time enterprise (RTE) business model designs for both successful and unsuccessful companies are used to provide real world understanding of the proposed framework.

Suggests superiority of strategy-pull models made feasible by new ‘‘plug-and-play’’ information and communication technologies over the traditional technology-push models. Critical importance of strategic execution in guiding the design of enterprise knowledge processes as well as selection and implementation of related technologies is explained.

Read pdf more …

The universe wide problem entails computerization because in any case for the reason that the processing inside ask to chop up gulp the expenses also to grant consumer satisfaction. inside this competitive globe these subjects should be want to know inside apply to strike the varied skillful companies. For this definite intention there are a portion of firms which are by way of the BPM or the Business development Management software given that their drive achievement plus competency. The BPM is a worth helpful successful plus solitary of the guaranteed management course of action which is furthermore set up to engagement helpful in nature.

Following are a few benefits take pleasure in which you might dig up to comprehend how enterprises would be triumphant by by means of this form of software.

The sophisticated would troth finished plus the analysis of that chronicle which emerges quickly subsequent to the moving processes along with the quintessential configuration with the plan exercise.

With the outstanding gain in the visibility furthermore efficiency, BPM experience an skill of securing the affair altogether transparent. The inhibition might certainly engagement seen plus subsequently steps could engagement allowed in apply to put off it. You will engagement able to envision the delays which are approaching to you plus are making becoming snag as you. You will troth able to trot out early the stages where there is blockages are approaching inside the way.

This techniques you will troth able to judge the memoir entirely accurately. You would also type references absolutely delicately since any breed of bid diary to engagement consulted.

Managing along furthermore furthermore done distinctive individuals is how useful managers dig up subjects done. useful managers certainly not estimate that they comprehend it the entirety in addition to they acquire a humble feelings toward facts as well as the knowledge as well as capabilities of those on the subject of them.

They have an always-learning mindset, this someone lone of the absolutely esteemed traits of satisfactory leadership.

Managing corresponding to this looks to come naturally to various persons minute others go through to notice how to modify inside this way. Any solitary may well do this.

This is realized by behind the five steps planned below:

There is an older adage that says two heads are superior than one. This is not regularly true, then again where human beings in a management role are reflecting almost about the matching problem question with talking it openly as well as truthfully it is additional feasible than not that they will catch a more adept modify on it.

several managers sort information finished the lens of finance along with accounting, others finished the impact that a management pronouncement may possibly pass through on people. everything these predispositions plus countless others carry invaluable insights to tolerate in contributing their perspectives as well as creating a aggregate photo of an top-notch affair concern.

Once a understandable icon plus an sure conception withstand emerged derive pleasure this collegiate entrance to managing precise affair features it is a large amount of more leisurely at the moment to reveal an assured group of objectives. This is realized by ensuring that the common meaning is translated into apparently articulated affair objectives that must engagement saw to choose the focus at hand.

Once the objectives go through been outlined, it is reasonably easy to construct an comprtment budget that fulfills the significant objectives indoor the certain moment frames also also the beneficial delegations with accountabilities assigned.

Effective managers get moving along with they act. only once the state of affair is it seems that learnt with clarity has been gained as regards to the objectives that tolerate to be ran into getting into data inherent risks and occurrences household tasks in addition to accountabilities, they act.

Effective managers exert along furthermore and ready others using frequent approaches to matters of concern. since of this they are able to pact at once along furthermore emerging facet throughout the implementation of any petite affair plan. This current with instinctive comment allows since incorporating fresh understanding into the unbeaten unending management of the problem state individual addressed. You can find more information at business process management tools and business process management tool

Here area set of ideas, candidate  assets if you will, of reusable software capabilities for your business processes. Please don’t take these as capabilities you have to build from scratch. Instead, view them as part of your overall BPM software infrastructure. Most of these capabilities could be provided by a single vendor or using an abstraction layer, you can realize these using multiple ones. You can also prioritize this list when evaluating vendor offerings.

1. Rule driven Exception Handler: Integrate exception handling with business rules engine. The rules could  determine how to resolve, mitigate, and handle errors. It will also specify routing instructions for errors requiring human intervention.
2. Internationalization Support: Status messages driven by a resource bundle as opposed to a single locale. Additional locale-specific resource bundles can be added as required for your business needs.
3. Seamless Cross Channel Movement: Enable a business process to start in one sales channel and get completed in another. Idea is to support business processes that start, pause, and get reactivated via an alternate channel. For example, a user can start ordering a book online and request a customer service rep to finish the process. The idea is to have the user’s in-progress process instance data get placed in appropriate work queues in a new business process or in a new state on the original one .
4. Business Process Completion API: Ability to determine % complete for any business process based on the state of the process instance . This API can provide the ability to get current status, estimate completion time (e.g. based on historical data), and what steps are remaining for the process instance to finish.
5. Business Activity Hold & Retry API: Facilitate pause, resume, and delegation of any business activity based on business rules. This interface would put processing on hold as well for one or more process instances.
6. Authentication: Enabling integration with a LDAP store, or providing digital certificate based security for interfaces that instantiate the business process are examples here.
7. Entitlements  API: Enable fine grained authorizations for business activities and business processes. Role based entitlements for events – i.e. if a particular user role cannot initiate a business process or execute a particular activity, the software  infrastructure should prevent those actions.
8. Content Management integration: Integrate with content management system to serve targeted content based on state of business process or to augment data in a process instance.
9. Event Integration API: Capture or derive events and handle them using one or more business processes. This could also impact existing process instances that are in-flight.
10. Indexed Search Integration API: Ability to execute full-text search as well as categorized search using an indexed search engine against completed and in-progress business process instances. E.g. search all process instances from a particular division or with a particular customer code, or category etc.
11. Process Dashboarding: Provide key business process metrics – report real time status of availability, performance, usage statistics, escalations, etc. Also provide ability to override/adjust in-flight process instances based on business scenarios.
12. Business Process Preferences API: Manage a set of process-level preferences. E.g. default logging level for all tasks could be set to high or all notifications get delivered to additional recipients, or data fixes will get audited a different way etc.
13. Document Integration: Attach documents using information in a process instance and attach/route content as part of the business process orchestration.
14. SLA Adherence API: Manage service level agreement specifications associated with end to end business process as well as key business activities. Ability to define/handle, and proactively prevent SLA violations.
15. KPI Definition and Monitoring API: Monitor business processes to capture key process indicators based on business process. E.g. number of accounts opened today, number of accounts opened after multiple validation errors etc.

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You can build business process automation solutions using a set of pre-defined assets – assembling processes rapidly is one key benefit of systematic reuse. These assets will help you reduce effort, increase consistency, and most importantly save costs. The following are the different categories of reusable assets:

Event Handlers: Help you place processing logic for various business events in this category. The event handler itself can instantiate a brand new business process or hook into an existing one. Event handlers can be used as reusable entry points to various processes. E.g. a delinquent account event could instantiate a ReviewCustomer business process or a document expired event could trigger a DocumentTracking business process.

View Example

Sub-processes: These are micro-flows reusable across multiple business process. These assets encapsulate system steps, human steps such as escalation and routing. For instance, Purchase Equipment and Book Itinerary could leverage Finance Approval Process Flow (Note: obviously this has to be thought through carefully – the context for each business process would be different and appropriate data has to be sent to a sub-process for it to be truly useful).

Event Generators: These will typically have logic to assemble, transform, and publish an event. The event needs could be stored in a system and sent via nightly batch and over time become real-time. Event generators will shield business processes from such changes. These could be message generation components that publish messages at various stages in a business process. The event itself could be published from several business processes – so these generation components themselves are reusable. For instance, the AddressUpdated event could be published from the Account Maintenance or via the Purchase Widget business processes.

Business Services (or Task services): These often contain orchestrations that invoke external data services, perform business logic with the help of rules. They typically map directly to a business capability and tend to be less reusable than data services. But they can be reused as well across business processes. For example, a getCustomerCreditRating service could be leveraged by AccountOpening and AccountManagement business processes.

Data Services: These are service capabilities that encapsulate key enterprise data such as customer, product, account, document and provide create/read/update/delete operations as well as search, validate, enrich functions as well. They can be accessed from business processes directly or within a task service.

Decision Services: These assets facilitate decision making in the process, often by invoking business rules. Some rules might be reusable if they encapsulate logic that is applicable across multiple processes. This may not always be possible and will require rules to be at the right level of granularity. E.g. a validate customer decision service could be used by AccountOpening and DocumentManagement business processes.

System Adapters: These are connectivity components that provide access to legacy applications and other proprietary systems. They are used by your services layer to shield business processes from being directly coupled to external systems. These adapters could be leveraged by data services, business services, and event generators.

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Mark Hurd, CEO of HP: “At the end of the day, [the CEO has] gotta get this part [business processes] of the business right to be able to align IT throughout the company. It’s no different than aligning your sales organization, aligning your R&D, aligning any other piece of it.”

So here we have yet another CEO articulating IT alignment with the business. This time, rather than making the CIO the “fall guy”, the tables are turned on the CEO.

Hurd recognizes the importance of translating business processes to IT technology, and furthermore, that the CEO should lead the charge. It’s not always something that has to come from the technology folks. The CEO needs to be astute enough to understand  how to improve overall company performance through the use of technology, and that’s a skill not every CEO possesses.

Traditionally, board-room level people lack an understanding of technology jargon and the latest trends, causing a rift in communication with their IT counter-parts. Watch their eyes glaze over when virtualization, rationalization of data, SAN and SAM are mentioned in presentations by IT leadership. 

Board room executives need to understand that taking the time to educate themselves in IT fundamentals and technology processes will provide a more open communication between the CIO and business unit executives. Core IT services will run better. Applications will be better designed to match company requirements, and ultimately, the end-user customer wins from this collaborative effort.

And, obviously, when the customer wins, the company wins.

It looks like Phil Everson from Deloitte has got it right. In his recent presentation about what the ideal IT Department looks like, post recession, he points out the key objectives of survival for IT.

Do you agree or disagree?

http://tinyurl.com/y9pm8g3

Learn eTOM in single Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Decomposition Description until Level-3. With mouse over on processes cell, one pop up comment will be shown with descriptions. Easy way to learn, understand eTOM with standard definitions. Enjoy your walk trough on Telecom Business Process Map. Share this link to your friend and lets talk how to integrate eTOM Processes and Knowledge Management.

Download eTOM ITU Microsoft Excel File …

Download Full Description eTOM Decomposition by ITU …
]]> http://artofsoftwarereuse.com/2009/11/07/envision-a-data-services-product-line/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:58:39 +0000 vijaynarayanan http://artofsoftwarereuse.com/2009/11/07/envision-a-data-services-product-line/

I want to expand on the idea of a data services product line – specifically data that is critical to several business processes in your firm. Why use SOA to build these reusable services? It makes sense due to several reasons:

The data services product line can include data services across customer, account, product, and document data domains providing several capabilities for several internal and external applications and business processes. The vision for this product line? To create a suite of services that will:

1. act as the single point of entry into interacting with core enterprise data
2. significantly increase reuse of core data assets across business processes
3. decrease time to market for new applications and services
4. decrease development, maintenance, and support costs across the data service domains
5. be scalable and extensible as business usage and needs varied over time

There are typically several sources of variation within the product line that needed to be effectively managed. Listed below is a subset of these variations:

• Data Format
• Data Structure
• Data Source
• Event Trigger
• Data Visibility
• Error Handling
• Data Translations
• Physical Transports
• Workflow/Human approvals

Have you built data services at your organization?

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I had two interesting discussions over the past few weeks; one with an IT manager and the other with Rhett Glause and Matt French from Service-Now. Both discussions related to the issue of managing service processes in a complex computing environments.  Let me start with the IT manager. He is charged with taking his organization’s web presence from 1990s architecture into a modern Web 2.0 design that will enable better support for customers and partners.  It is a big effort with lots of interaction with the customer facing departments about what they want and with the IT organization about how this new environment will be supported.  Now, this part isn’t out of the ordinary and this is not what this manager was having problems with.  He was being driven crazy by process. The company he works for is devoted to ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). ITIL is a set of best practices designed to help companies create environments that have a common way to troubleshoot problems with managing complex services.  They are intended as guidelines – not step-by-step instructions about how to managing service processes. In fact, ITIL best practices mandate that you need to start with your strategy for managing services before you get involved in the details.

The IT manager’s problem is that his company’s IT department was so embroiled in process that it was causing excessive delays in getting to a solution. It has a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) —  a repository for all of the details about an application environment including who can change something; how a service or an application is configured and what the change management process is. This company’s problem is that it has set up a change review board that has to review and approve every change for the new environment.  Therefore, something that should take a few days to develop is taking six month of endless meetings.  In other words, the IT manager’s organization is too caught up in process so that it actually crippling the ability to get the job done.  According to the IT manager, “It’s bureaucracy gone mad! This approach will not help make IT more responsive; it will do the opposite.”

I thought about the discussion in context with a great call I had with Matt French, director of marketing and product strategy and Rhett Glauser, communications manager at Service-Now, an IT service desk software as a service company.  What did they think of my friend’s tale of woe? They agreed that this is a common perspective that they hear from customers.  Many customers are beginning to understand that they have to take a pragmatic view of process.  Their top recommendation was that companies should approach ITIL in a phrased approach.

So, here are some recommendations about how to handle process in context with driving business value:

• Establish a light-weight CMDB by only focusing on configuration items that the organization really needs. If a process isn’t likely to change, it might not be necessary to track that process.  You don’t need a change management process for everything.
• Get IT management to take a step back from relying too heavily on IT processes. Rather management needs to be focused on what is important to business management and then execute in a pragmatic way.
• Every service should have a business owner who can make decisions.
• When a change management process is required make sure that there is a change advisory board. There needs to be one person who has the authority to manage that change in the context of the business drivers. The change management board should expedite process and should not become a bottleneck.

In the end it is about common sense. If IT organizations are going to be effective in managing business requirements they have to look at service management in context with the overall priorities of the business. This was the key message our team was aiming for when we wrote Service Management for Dummies. Service management is increasingly defining not only how we manage IT environments but how we managed businesses. Therefore a streamlined view of process management will be the difference between success and failure.