First of all, if you haven’t heard of SCRUM, it’s not soap residue.  It’s an agile process for developing software.  It’s totally different than the traditional waterfall development where all the business analysis is gathered up front, the prototypes are designed and the product is built to specifications that hopefully haven’t changed since the beginning of the project.

What makes SCRUM work for businesses?  To keep it simple, it cuts out the waste, speeds up development, testing and delivery.  It also improves the quality of the product with less rework needed because the client plays an integral role and is kept very close to the project.

Look familiar? It’s too bad there isn’t an electronic way to organize and manage your significant documents. Oh Wait!….There Is! Customized document management systems add value to your business by cutting costs, improving office efficiency and increasing overall productivity.

Beyond that, the installation of a separate full blown stand-alone document management system may be overkill if your problem is focused on the management of a specific document type such as material test reports or the product safety sheets associated with your inventory or manufactured goods. Many ERP systems provide the ability to link documents to operational records. What they lack are the mechanisms to scan, classify, and automatically establish the necessary links.

The field of document management can span solutions ranging from providing a simple electronic filing cabinet to the most sophisticated data extracting, workflow, record retention and automated disposition system. Thoughtful analysis of what brings value may very well reveal significant cost benefits and productivity improvements as a result of the implementation of simple and straight-forward process improvements such as the integration of a document management system with your ERP or other operational support system.

If integrating with your ERP, you should expect these benefits:

• Ensure the safe sharing of proprietary information among individuals and between collaborating departments by setting user permissions for each document

• Reduce costly administrative filing tasks by reducing paper piles and reclaim office space by eliminating filing cabinets

• Improve efficiency by providing access to important information from within your existing operational system

• Improve ability to search for documents and the associated items in your inventory

• Reduction in the time and labor spent tagging, categorizing and indexing your current documents and the reduction or elimination of the costs of time spent searching for misplaced folders

Alistair Cockburn, one of the initiators of the agile movement in software development, introduced this concept of learning in his book “Agile Software Development.”

The concept of “Shu Ha Ri”, is a Japanese martial arts concept that applies to the practice of learning, from beginner to the level of mastery. He wrote about three levels of practice: learn, detach, transcend and how we can apply them to our learning experiences.

Shu-Ha-Ri is a way to think about the levels of learning that we progress through as we gain knowledge about something.   The idea is that as in order for a person to master something they need to pass through three stages of growth.

• Shu: This is the beginning stage of learning where we follow and mimic the steps of others.    They focus on doing the task with knowing or worrying about the “why”.  This is a period of coping without adaption.

• Ha: The intermediate stage is the point the we begin to branch out. We gain knowledge of the “why” and start integrating what we have learned into our practice.

• Ri:  The mastery stage is a stage of continuation.   We aren’t  learning from other people anymore. We are learning from own experience and practice. We are able to adapt what we learn to their own experiences and circumstances.   This is also referred to as a state of flow, around some particular practice.

In my experience, I found this to be a true path when learning most anything.  First we start out by imitating and following, and then we move on to fluent mastery.

For example, a child learning to talk imitates the words other people in their lives are speaking not really fully knowing the meaning.   But then learning happens and the child begins to associate the word with real meaning, even though they only know how to use those words in a limited context.    Then more leaning happens (mastery) as the child begins to take the words they know and apply them to other contexts as they experience them.

However, I find myself at many different levels of learning for on a variety of differ things.    I can be a “Shu” on one practice, and “Ha” and “Ri” at others.   By the way, I feel like I have more “Ha” practices and very few “Ri” practices.

I am defiantly in the “Shu” stage on my golf game.  Just following the steps of my instructor, but still not really understanding the why’s of things like technique, club # , and such.  As compared to Roy Mcllroy’s performance at the U.S. Open, which undoubtedly classifies his practice as “Ri” (mastery).  (I don’t normally watch golf, but that was an exciting game!)

I will mostly likely never be a “Ri” at golf, so you might not want to pair up with me on the course if you’re looking to win.   But I am striving to get to “Ri” in my knowledge of other practices, such as team building, agile development, and intrinsic thinking.

So where do you find self in “Shu Ha Ri”?

You can find out more about this in Alistair’s book: Agile Software Development.

Here’s a great technique that helps in determining project feature priority.  Agile/Scrum manifesto is based on the premise of working on the high value items first.  These may be the features that bring the highest ROI, a matrix of complexity / risk vs. value, market value, etc.   Whatever the determining factor is, the prioritization of these value features is important in order to ensure that those value items are delivered first.

Story mapping is a process of defining the features/functions that you want your project to accomplish and organizing them in a way that makes the most sense (by process, menu option, user role, etc).  This provides the team, with a “big picture” view of the project as a whole.

We use this in conjunction with our “Product Backlog” (Agile/Scrum requirements list), prioritized list of user stories (requirements / features) for the team to implement.   This works well for our Sprint Planning, but doesn’t show a big picture view of the project.

This big picture view project helps in the definition, organization and prioritization of user stories (requirements / features).  It provokes communication and provides a clear path to the high value user stories.

How does it work?

Write down all the features you would like to have as a result of the project on to sticky notes (one on each).    With the help of a facilitator, classify each into groups (by process, menu option, user role, or etc.) that make the most sense.

Take different color sticky notes and write the group name for each   (one on each). Then arrange all of the features, underneath each group note, sticking them on the wall in rows/columns as the logical arrangement naturally occur.   Feature sticky notes can be moved around, as the team makes sense of the emerging flow.

Once complete, the Story Map gives a high-level view of all features and allows the team to make better decision about the high value feature sets.   The set of high value features becomes the “Minimum Marketable Feature Set”, the set of feature that most be implemented to make this project successful.   Now you know where to start!

The Story Map then becomes a boundary object, providing a mechanism where different points of view converge and enables a shared understanding to be formed. But most of all it helps in defining, reinforcing and communicating the project vision.

Happy mapping!

Since I am not proficient in all technology trends, the rising popularity of virtualization was not something I could quickly wrap my head around. When I hear the word “virtualization” I think of “virtual reality” games and training. Wikipedia’s definition of “virtual reality” is: “a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world”. So I then deducted that “virtualizing a server” was something along the lines of using a virtual server to do the job of a physical server when the physical one was not available. While I was happy with my conclusion, I had to know if I was right. I sat down with Doug Cottle, one of our Technical Analysts, and grilled him on the topic. It turns out, my assumption was fairly correct, and I got even more information on virtualization which I am glad to now share with you.

THE “INTERVIEW”

Christine:

Doug, there’s been a recent buzz in the business world about server virtualization. What does it mean to virtualize a server?

Doug:

Virtualizing a server is basically taking a physical server and creating an electronic version of it or a Virtual Machine.  A physical host server is setup that can run multiple Virtual Machines.

Christine:

Ok, so what are the major advantages of virtualization?

Doug:

Virtualization offers many advantages over running independent physical machines.  Many times software is spread across multiple servers not because of resource limitations but to avoid conflicts between the applications.  By virtualizing the servers you can run multiple servers from a single physical box.  For example: Instead of buying a physical server for Microsoft Exchange and another physical server for Blackberry Enterprise Server you can simply buy one server and set it up as a VM Host, then run the virtual instances of both the Exchange and BES from the single host.  Fewer physical boxes results in lower equipment and operation costs as well as conserving space through consolidation.  Virtualization also offers companies a way to implement redundancy without purchasing additional hardware.  Other benefits include: Simple backup and disaster recovery solutions, aid in testing and development, and to centralize server administration.

Christine:

Why do you think it is becoming such a hot topic now?

Doug:

Hardware resources (processing power/memory) have increased faster than software resource demand.  It makes sense economically to Virtualize.  Virtualization is a cost effective solution that has many great benefits and is easier to implement now than ever.

Christine:

Hmm, that is really interesting. Are there any disadvantages though that people should be aware of before virtualizing?

Doug:

Aside from requiring new skills that the current administrator may not have the biggest drawback to virtualization is a single hardware failure can bring down multiple servers.  If you have a VM host running four of you main production servers and the motherboard dies, your four production servers are now dead as well.  Of course with redundant systems in place it would not be an issue.  Having a single point of failure for multiple servers is probably one of the biggest items to be taken in to consideration when planning to virtualize.  Doing your homework during the planning phase will definitely pay off years down the road.

This “interview” with Doug really helped me fill in the gaps of my understanding of virtualization. I hope you feel better informed as well.

If you have any questions or would like further information about virtualization, please visit RSA Corp or email us at info@rsacorp.com.

When talking “technology” among you colleagues and friends, who comes to mind as the man that started it all?  Would it be Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? Or maybe in your circle of friends it’s all about Linus Torvalds?  Well, in honor of Father’s Day, let’s think back even farther.  Back to the real “Father of Computers” and the man that in many ways really is the one that is truly responsible for kicking off this progression that has led to where we are today.  I’m talking (of course) about Charles Babbage.  He was given the title “Father of Computers” in 1970 by Daniel Halacy.

Charles’ life’s work was to create a machine (Difference Engine) that would replace the need for a person to perform the painstakingly tedious task of manual calculations.  At the time, it was a low-level mindless job function performed by a team of people referred to as “computers” because their sole job duty was to add and subtract (to compute) data.  It was terribly inefficient and there were many errors in the calculation.  Charles believed that a machine could be built to accomplish this task and replace the need for a large staff of unskilled workers performing basic addition and subtraction, and that the machine could be relied on to perform these computations more accurately at a much faster rate.  This (for all practical purposes) was the first time a machine would be referred to as a “computer”.  This was the mechanical offspring that earned Babbage the title “The Father of Computers”.

Charles Babbage gave birth to this idea.  He spent his life designing and redesigning this “Difference Engine” (mechanical computer) and it has gone on to develop quite a life of its own.  Did he know the impact this would have on the world?  Did he know that his mechanical offspring would go on to create the ideas and new offspring and one day there would be computers carried around in people’s pockets more powerful than anything ever imagined at the time?

As a father, I can’t imagine all the ways my babies will grow up and impact the lives around them.  I try to instill my values and ensure they are happy and healthy in childhood with (of course) the hopes that one day they grow up and realize all their dreams in life.  Every parent wants their child to succeed. We want them to grow and develop a great life in adulthood; but can we really imagine the impact our children will have on the world 20 or 30 years from now?  We would like to imagine we will still be around to see our babies grow to their full potential in adulthood and see the wonderful life we created making a positive impact on our world.  This unfortunately wasn’t the case for Mr. Babbage.  His Difference Engine would not be completed until 1991 (120 years after his death) and its first computation successfully returned a result with 31 digits, far more than the modern calculator.  He is quoted (referring to this Difference Engine) as saying, “Another age must be the judge” because he did not have the parts, nor the technology, to see his designs to completion.  The designs he created went on to form a life of their own and have, in turn, flourished and thrived to spawn advancements in technology far beyond his wildest dreams.  The basic architecture of Babbage’s machines is not much different than a modern computer.  The data and program memory are separated, operation was instruction based, the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machines had a separate I/O unit.  So in many ways, that he himself probably didn’t completely realize, he designed a machine that would become the basis for the modern computer and change the world forever.

Next time you’re talking “technology” with your friends and coworkers, see how many of them can actually recall who holds the title “The Father of Computers”.  Remind them that it was the designs and ideas of Charles Babbage that really started it all.

Happy Father’s Day to you, Charles  Babbage, and to all of you great dads out there!

Lean production techniques, just-in-time delivery and reengineered corporations have forever changed the rules of logistics management. Having what’s needed, when needed, and in the appropriate quantities has become more difficult and complex. And for those companies providing logistics services, the competition to attract and keep customers has done everything but become simpler.

Logistics is about service. Competition is no longer restricted to delivering the best and most cost effective form of warehousing, packaging, shipping, local delivery or other contracted services. Providers are now judged on how well their business models and back-office systems conform to and support the needs oftheir customers.

LogicSmart’s analysis of their clients’ needs led them to venture beyond the services they traditionally had been providing. Their industry knowledge and deep insights into the needs of their clients allowed LogicSmart to recognize areas where they could engage to significantly improve their clients’ processes; and in turn, gain both a competitive advantage and bind their clients more tightly through the uniqueness of their new service offering.

Many of the shipments handled by LogicSmart originate in plants in mainland China resulting in the need to track the shipment from the initial trucking company to export packing to maritime transport to US customs to intermodal trucking and potentially through a US over the road trucking firm to the final receiving dock.

To allow their customers to track these shipments, LogicSmart developed a specialized data acquisition and display application. LogicSmart’s application allows their customers to provide information on shipments to be tracked and the carriers that are being used. LogicSmart’s application then logs onto the web sites of each carrier in the logistics pipeline and acquires information on the shipments being tracked. This information is aggregated and stored in a database. Another component of the application presents the customer with current status and location of their shipment.

LogicSmart’s application simplifies tracking shipments. Two shipments can leave the same manufacturing plant bound for the same destination at the same time but using entirely different carriers and yet LogicSmart’s application provides the same information on both shipments. LogicSmart’s application provides a straight forward approach to simplifying a very complex process and eliminates a large amount of manual effort in tracking goods from plant to final destination yielding more timely, accurate and usable information.

The benefit to LogicSmart is that they have been able to attract additional customers due to the value their customers assign to being able to more easily track their shipments as they cross the globe and pass from one transportation firm to another.

*We are using the name “LogicSmart”, as the actual company name is being omitted for the purpose of this story.

Let’s face it…everyone these days has a website.  It is estimated that over 75% of the worlds small to medium sized businesses currently have an active website.  These websites contain vital data to run the business, account numbers, client contact information, financial data, and an extensive amount of data that can be used for malicious reasons.  Even if your most sensitive data isn’t “out there” on the internet, these websites allow access to the systems on your network that DO house this data.

There was a time when hackers and identity thieves would prey on larger corporations going after a guaranteed target to find the information they needed, but today that is not the case. Small to medium sized businesses are a common target because more times than not these companies have the most accessible holes in their system for a hacker to exploit.  Even seemingly “secure data” can be accessed through other vulnerabilities in the system using wide variety of methods.  How secure are you?

If your company is connected to the internet you are exposed to some degree.  Security is so often overlooked, but with a recent increase in high profile cyber-attacks, companies are starting to realize how important their networks’ security really is.  The scary part is how vulnerable most companies are even when they think they have a fair amount of security already in place.  Unfortunately, security is often times one of the things we don’t realize how important it is until it is too late and how important it is to have frequent security audits/updates.

There are generally two scenarios to get targeted for an attack.

One is for an individual to decide they want to attack you.  There is not much you can do to stop this from happening, but there is definitely a lot you can do to prevent them from being successful.  With this type of attack, the attacker is more likely to take steps in order to minimize discovery.  The attacker could be an ex-employee, a competitor, or simply seeking revenge on your company.  Without an experienced administrator, this type of attack could easily go unnoticed.

The other scenario, and probably the most common, is to have a vulnerability in your network that is exposed by scanners.  Computers are constantly scanning the internet looking for machines that have unpatched vulnerabilities.  Basically…someone starts a program, when the program gives them results they use the information to exploit the system.  It takes no high level skill to perform this method which is what makes it so dangerous.  Often referred to as “script kiddies” in the industry, users can gain unauthorized access to a remote system without the high level of knowledge typically associated with hacking.  Once access is gained, damage is highly likely.  The attacker is doing it for fun. Their personal gain is the excitement, so there will be no regard for damage the company experiences as a result.  This is not only an issue for large corporations.  Many of these “script kiddies” aren’t hacking for any general purpose other than for bragging rights to their friends, so it doesn’t matter what size of organization or what damage they do.  Many small to medium sized businesses find themselves the victim of an attack such as this one because they don’t think they would be targeted.  That’s just the point though…everyone is a target and a potential victim and these cyber-attacks are becoming more and more frequent with small to medium sized businesses as the intended target.

Cyber-attacks cost companies, of all sizes, substantial amounts of money every day.  Unlike physical property, stolen digital data can be rapidly duplicated so the damage cannot be ‘undone’ by recovering the data.  The moment it is stolen there is NO getting it back, merely getting back one of the many copies of it.  The way in your system and to your data could be anything; a user account that was never disabled, common passwords, improperly configured wireless access point, a lost or stolen laptop, etc.

How are you handling your security?  Do you have a reputable partner with the proven experience finding (and correcting) these security holes in your network?  These attacks happen every day and if the proper measures aren’t in place along with the proper ongoing maintenance it is only a matter of time before your security has been breached.  There are many reputable firms that can perform the necessary security audits to find the holes before an unscrupulous hacker finds his or her way into your network to cause immeasurable mayhem.  RSA can provide security auditing services and the proper network management to ensure these vulnerabilities are exposed and corrected.  Even if you have an internal IT Team managing the network it is very advantageous to allow a 3^rd party to offer an unbiased opinion into how secure things really are.

Here are some of the basic guidelines.  Doing these things will help keep your information secure, but these are just the basics.

• Use strong passwords (alpha-numeric, 8 character minimum)
• Rotate passwords on a quarterly basis
• If a user doesn’t need specific access, don’t grant it
• Keep all security patches up to date
• Have a good firewall that is properly configured and keep it updated regularly
• NEVER use unsecured wireless
• Have Anti-Virus on ALL machines

Security is not just about the products in place, it is about the processes being followed and the attention to detail when auditing your network for vulnerabilities.  Having the proper processes in place will not only keep you ahead of the competition, but constantly monitoring your security keeps you one step ahead of the “bad guys” out there looking to wreak chaos for no other reason other than personal satisfaction.  So ask yourself…“ How secure are we, really?” Then call RSA Corp for a security audit and to ensure that your network is performing with the best security possible.  We can be your partner to keep you one step ahead of the competition.

Join RSA Corp, friends, and colleagues at this fabulous Agile Workshop by Mac Iver Group, LP on Monday, June 6th.

Duration: One Day

Class Size: 8 to 24 persons

Come Take An Agile Journey

Then this workshop is for you. Whether you are a project manager, business analyst, developer, tester, architect, product manager, team leader, business manager, quality control analyst, or simply “agile curious” this workshop is your chance to get some hands on experience with agile practices. Come roll up your sleeves and jump into a day of activities, exercises, and interactive discussions that will let you touch and feel agile practices and take them out for a spin.

The solution to Mary getting in trouble in the nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, is obvious and apparent; just don’t take that little lamb to school!  Sometimes problems in business seem as obvious and they are easy to fix.  Other times, not so much.  A manufacturing client of ours had an issue meeting commitment deadlines and getting their product shipped.  With RSA’s help, our client in the below, rewritten nursery rhyme was able to pinpoint the areas in the process that were causing the issue and utilize the custom app that we wrote for them to monitor production daily and meet their commitments.

Just as Mary got in trouble for taking her lamb to school in the nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, our client kept getting complaints from their customers because their shipments were not arriving on time. They turned to RSA to help them understand why they were missing their commitments and why their shipments were not meeting their schedule.

RSA Corp was glad to provide the solution to their problem. RSA developed a customized application for that examines each completed work order, analyzes promise verses completion dates, reviews the logic of how the product moves through the environment, and then determines why the commit date was not met. With our help, the client is able to identify WHY their business isn’t running smoothly and can take immediate action to correct it.

Mary Had a Custom App…

Client had a shipment date, 

Shipment date, shipment date,

Client had a shipment date,

They often couldn’t meet.

And every time they missed a date,

Missed a date, missed a date,

And every time they missed a date,

They had to face the heat.

They needed help from RSA,

RSA, RSA,

They needed help from RSA,

To get them back on time.

We made an app to show the way,

Show the way, show the way,

We made an app to show the way,

Their goods moved through the line.

And so they saw where they went wrong,

They went wrong, they went wrong,

And so they saw where they went wrong,

With timing on the floor.

Production now moves right along,

Right along, right along,

Production now moves right along,

And makes it out the door.

“Can a custom app help me too?”

Help me too? Help me too?

“Can a custom app help me too,”

Smart businesses do cry.

“Yes, they can help business improve.”

Business improve, business improve,

“Yes, they can help business improve,”

Is RSA’s reply.

Kim Payne, Senior Project Manager at RSA Corp, discusses improvements on logistics and inventory tracking, especially for the Marine Industry and other similar industries.

Kim Payne, Senior Project Manager at RSA Corp, explains how customer portals adds business value.

You already know that you can get your e-mail by logging into a website on the Internet. What if you could also get word processing, spreadsheet or presentation software as well? Instead of installing Quickbooks and maintaining the database on a server located at your office, why not login to ClarityAccounting or Quickbooks Online and have access to your data from anywhere, anytime, within minutes? The ability to run a business with your entire server structure online is the embodiment of cloud computing. No more servers to install, manage, update or upgrade.

Leave behind the expensive software for which you purchase a license for each of your computers and instead pay for only what you need. One employee could work using the same software from any computer they choose without having to purchase and install the software on any of the computers. This saves potentially thousands of dollars in software licensing alone.

Server functions will become a thing of the past. File servers and backup systems are being replaced by companies like SugarSync, OpenDrive and Mozy. These services allow you to save to their server online as if it were a server in your office. If you need strictly backup services for your company, you could employ services from companies like CloudReplica. If your onsite server goes toes up, the operation will failover to the CloudReplica service. Once you have your server back up and running, you can replicate the entire system from CloudReplica to your new box.

Cloud computing is the future of IT. The technological advances in networking have closed the gap in long distance communications and makes real-time, offsite processing a reality.

Scenario 1

• Good Idea – Calling us when your computer is down
• Bad Idea – Calling a shrink when your computer is down

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

One of the most exciting developments in recent years is the concept of virtualization.  Once thought of as a tool for the large enterprise, recent developments have made the possibility of running multiple computers on one physical host affordable and attractive to the SMB market.

First, a history lesson…..

The concept of virtualization began back in the 1960s, when IBM started working with the concept of running multiple processes on the same equipment.  Powerhouse machines easily cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, and an idle computer could be extremely costly to maintain with no benefit.  To get the biggest bang for their buck, IBM engineers found a way for a computer to do multiple jobs at once; a mainframe computer could calculate a budget and collate a customer list at the same time, and the processor would have a much shorter downtime.  Many of these concepts were incorporated into new chip designs, but largely the concept changed into the concept of “multitasking”, which we use to this day.  (AT+T advertises that on the iPhone, you can surf the Internet and talk on the phone at the same time, but I haven’t found much of a use for it yet.)  The concept of virtualizing a computer largely faded in the 1980s and 1990s, as computers became more affordable, and we didn’t worry as much about system idle time (not downtime, where your IT guy runs around like his hair is on fire).

Fast forward to today – the year 2010 (or is    that the temperature here inTexas?), when we are  once again trying to maximize our computer  investment.  Computers are still a cheaper    resource compared to their distant IBM  ancestors, but they are more critical than ever.    In 1965, if your computer crashed, you called the  repair team, and your employees moved on with  their work – it was mostly manual anyway.  In  2010, if your computer crashes, that team member comes to a screeching halt – if the server crashes, your whole business comes to a screeching halt, and the costs start adding up.

In addition (and I’ve seen this with more clients than I’d care to admit), growing business got into the issue of “server creep” – they outgrew a server, or needed one for a new initiative, and simply bought another one.  Before they realize it, they are supporting six or seven individual servers, on different hardware, all draining the same amount of power, and slowly increasing the power demands on the business.  The electric bill goes up, the heat from the additional servers go up, and before you know it, money is being thrown at electrical upgrade, air conditioning, and space.  A short-term decision suddenly became a costly maintenance item.  Take a large company like HP, Coca Cola, or even the US government, and the costs start increasing into the millions.

Then came virtualization, a way for one powerful machine to act as many smaller machines.  Large companies could shrink down their farm of servers to a few boxes, and run faster, using every last bit of processing power available to them.  In large environments, the cost savings was immediate, and easily justified the big dollars paid to the virtualization companies to take advantage of this new technology.

However, the smaller companies didn’t have as big of a benefit, and many wrote it off altogether.

Until VMWare came along, and turned the industry on its head.  Again.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s look at the benefits and risks of a VM environment, in general:

• Maintenance cost – Maintaining a server is a costly exercise.  Taking out the usual maintenance (updates, service packs, log reviews, etc.), the cost of electric for a typical server is about $520/year, and puts off about 1700 BTU/hr in heat.  In an environment with six servers, for instance, the cost is $3120/year, and averages about 10,200 BTU/hr in heat, which you need to keep chilled.  Take that same environment, put in a highly reliable and beefy server, and you can reduce the costs to $2180/year for electric, and only 7,160 BTU/hr to keep chilled – your AC isn’t working as hard, and you will get more life out of it.  These are very rough numbers for examples; every situation is different, and they are actually on the low side of the potential savings.

• Management cost – Servers need to be maintained.  Routine servers can be accessed through an SSL, RDP, VNC, or other connection for maintenance, but what if you need to restart the server?  Before I got involved in virtualization, if we had a server crash, I would need to drive two hours to our colocation facility, research and fix the issue, and drive two hours back – I lost four hours each time the server crashed.  In a virtual world, that 4-hour round-trip affair is gone – as long as I can get into the physical host (the beefy server running my virtual machines), I can restart the servers easily, and usually faster than the old-fashioned hardware reset.

• Decreased downtime – I addressed the major issue with downtime above, but here’s another example – let’s say my server got a virus (happens to the best of us, sorry), and crashed my system.  On a traditional system, I would need to pull backups and restore from the tape archives, a dicey and time-intensive process; if it doesn’t work, I need to reinstall the server from scratch.  In the virtual world, I can fall back to a previous “snapshot” of my server, and have it up and running in minutes.  If, for some reason, the snapshot fails, I can reinstall prepared images of the server to cut down on the rebuild time – instead of staring at a computer for an hour waiting for the software to reload, I can have my server back up and functional with a few clicks.

• Conservation of resources – When virtualization was first introduced, the concept was to maximize the use of the processors.  As I gained more servers, I had more servers with idle time – some servers would be at full load, and some would be at 10% load if I was lucky (especially with Web servers).  With a beefy server, my processer will be utilized more, and if Server A uses more than I planned, a few button clicks can give that server another processor, more memory, or whatever it needs.

• N-level flexibility – Higher-end servers get better parts, just like an Infiniti will have better parts than a Hyundai (was thinking Yugo, but I didn’t want to date myself).  More parts means more options.  Need a dedicated Ethernet port for a server?  No problem, the big server has four, and only one of them is being used right now.  Need more memory/processors?  Just click here.  Need to configure three machines on a VLAN, and the fourth in a DMZ?  Use this wizard.  The possibilities are only bound by the server, but this is a much better server than you’ve used in the past.

• Ease of transfer – Congratulations, you’ve used your server for three years, and Bob Johnson just got the biggest account of his life, so your business just doubled overnight.  Under the old system, you would have to add more servers (more cost, more heat, etc).  Under virtualization, you can over-spec your VMs (not really recommended, but a short-term band-aid), and when your new server comes in, just move the files from one server to the next.  Nothing has to change except when you want it to change.

• Sandbox – My kids have spent hours in the sandbox, or on the beach, playing with new ideas on castle construction and sand-shovel irrigation projects.  When they’re done, Mother Nature erases their projects, and makes it ready for the next little dreamer.  VM sandboxes are the same – you can test out the new server, toy, etc., in an isolated mode, and do virtually anything you want – when you’re done, click Delete, and the VM is gone.  Much better than hoping the old desktop in the back of the broom closet can run Exchange 2010 before you have to install it live for the entire company.

And now, the risks:

• Costs – High-end servers are pricey.  Just be sure to figure the ROI over the length of the usable life (no more than four years – I prefer three).

• Single point of failure – If a virtual server dies, a few clicks restarts it.  If your physical host dies, you’re dead in the water.  Large companies have failover configurations to prevent this.  We recommend a failover configuration, but realize sometimes it’s just not feasible.  Just be sure to get the warranty coverage – Dell offers some great coverage on their servers (for the record, I’m not a Dell fan, but I have to recognize excellence when I see it).

• UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) – Maybe you held off on getting the backup battery.  Don’t even think about it with a virtual server.  While the system is very resilient, the VMs themselves are nothing more than files, and you want to be sure they are shut down properly.

• Management tools – Do a search on the Internet, and you will find a virtual cornucopia (I bet a friend of mine I could use that word in conversation) of information and trialware of programs to manage your network; some are free, most cost money.  Be careful when looking at these programs – many of them are bloatware that you will never use, and mimic some of the tasks you can do for free.

There are some tools to get you started on your way to the world of virtualization, but I would recommend discussing your needs with a computer professional before signing that big check.  You can also start on your way with virtualization now with some of your old equipment, to get you familiar with the benefits and caveats of a virtual environment.

Next time – a couple of my VM recommendations, and things to consider on your new path.

Daily Scrums

A lot of time can be wasted in meetings that add little value to the overallresults of the project. Daily Scrums eliminate long elaborate meetings in favor of shorter productive ones.  The objective is to provide laser focus to indentify issues quickly and productively.

The Daily Scrum is a simple daily routine meeting, which helps the team self-organize, focus, identify and eliminate impediments to progress. The primary goal is to allow team members to get to the point by telling what they are working on and what they are having issues with. The meeting lasts a maximum of 15 minutes. All team members are required to attend personally, by phone or by proxy.

During this time, team member discuss progress, obstacles and daily plans.

Successful scrum meetings demonstrate the following features:

• Meeting should be 15 minutes or less
• Standing rather than sitting – this helps to keep the meeting short and everyone focused
• All project stakeholders should attend the daily scrum – to eliminate that need to repeat information
• Team members should only focus on: what was done yesterday, what will be done today, what issues may cause problems for progress
• The meeting should be held in the same place and at the same time every day
• Burndown charts and Status boards are updated during the meeting – which visibly records progress being made.

By adhering to the above practices, you can increase the efficiency of your team and improve the quality of your project by avoiding tedious and time-wasting meetings.

Conclusion

Over the past several weeks we have highlighted for you five ways that Agile works to eliminate waste. My hope is that you now have a better understanding about the advantages that Agile offers and its primary focus to eliminate waste and streamline the application development process.  There are many other advantages to using the Agile methodology, of which there are too many to highlight in this segment.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers” by Mary and Tom Poppendieck, is an excellent book that defines how lean manufacturing processes can be applied to software development.

Kim Payne, Senior Project Manager at RSA Corp, shares how custom applications can help a business with their branding in addition to its various other benefits.

Next, in our series on how Agile eliminates waste in the custom application development process, we focus on Backlogs and how they are used to make projects more efficient and ultimately more successful; meaning more likely to be on-time, on-budget, and exceeding client expectations.

Backlogs are logs that contain lists of User Stories (see part 3 of 5).   There are two types of Backlogs, Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog. Both have a specific purpose directed toward eliminating waste and maximizing value.

Product Backlog

The Product Backlog is a list of User Stories, generated and prioritized by the Product Owner in order of value and business importance.  At this stage, the User Stories are defined at a high level and lack the details needed to turn them into functions. This is intentional; why waste time defining or documenting functions that may never be used or are not sufficient in value?

The Product Backlog is dynamic; it is constantly changing based on the measurement of business value and business priorities.

We select User Stories with the highest priority, as described on the Product Backlog, as candidates to be included in the next development iteration, also known as a “Sprint”. Next, we estimate how many of those User Stories can be completed within the iteration (see part 1 of 5).

Sprint Backlog

Which brings us to the Sprint Backlog … the selected User Stories are further defined into development tasks that will comprise the Sprint Backlog for the next Sprint or iteration.  The Sprint Backlog includes the Stories and tasks that become the planned work for the upcoming Sprint.

A Sprint is a two or three week cycle of planned development work, that will deliver one or more fully functioning features, based on the User Stories in the Sprint Backlog.

After each Sprint is completed, this cycle is repeated.  Users Stories are reprioritized on the Product Backlog by the Product Owner, refined into tasks on the Sprint Backlog, and delivered upon completion of the Sprint.

Tying it all together

The process of User Stories moving from the Product Backlog to the Sprint Backlog, ensures that only those Stories or functions with the highest value make it into the Sprint.  It eliminates any wasted effort spent on User Stories or functions that brings little or no value to the business, freeing up resources for more valuable work.

And most importantly, your company benefits from more ROI for its IT dollars.

Stay tuned for the final segment on how Agile eliminates waste in the application development process.

How are you using Backlogs to refine your businesses return on ROI?

Kim Payne, Senior Project Manager at RSA Corp, explains how using custom applications gives businesses a competitive advantage over those businesses that still use “off-the-shelf” software packages.

Episode #20 – Jason Kuhn, CIO of RSA Corp, discusses how a business can improve their processes using the technology they already own right there at their fingertips.

Episode #18 – Joan Kreidle, Project Manager at RSA Corp, explains how Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) helps to cut costs by streamlining business processes through the management of internal and external resources.

Here’s number 3 of the 5 top wasters that Agile addresses.  In the previous segment, we discussed iteration cycles and how that they can be used to eliminate waste in the software development process.

Standish reports that 64% of software functionality is never or rarely used.  By eliminating wasted functionality we can spend 64% more time and money on functionality that adds value and creates ROI.  Why waste money and time on functionality that will never be used?

Agile provides a way to eliminate wasted functionality by the use of User Stories and Product Backlog

Software projects often times involve requirements that are roughly defined; we rarely get the opportunity to have fully defined requirements at project start-up.  Requirements normally start out at a high level and become clearer, as you move through the project.  Why waste time developing coding and design documentation before the requirements become clear?  Often information is created so early in the process that it becomes inaccurate and obsolete, even before the functionality is delivered.  Why waste time developing documentation for requirements that will change or may never even get implemented?

Agile focuses on the just in time concept of refining and documenting requirement details, as the information is needed.  This is done through the simple use of User Stories.

User Stories

Project requirements are created as User Stories, story cards that describe the expected outcome from the deliverable from Stakeholder/Product Owners point of view.  User Stories are used to defined requirement functionality at a level that the Project Owner can describe and understand.  Project Owners are directly involved with the creation of the User Stories and in many cases become the owners of the Stories.

Each User Story describes only one function.  It should describe the role, the desired function, the reason for the function and the acceptance criteria for that function.

Example:
Role: External Customer
Function: View account information
Reason: External Customer is interested in knowing what they have ordered and payment balances
Acceptance: External Customer will be able to view account activity and transactions, both history and current.

We then estimate each story using a points system.  Each story is estimated in points, given the expected effort, complexity and clarity.  The points will be used later to measure the velocity (productivity levels) of the team.

The User Story needs to be brief taking only a few minutes to define.  It is recommended that each be written out on a 3×5 card to consciously enforce the idea of smallness.  User stories reduce waste by eliminating wasted hours spent on elaborate documentation that will never be read by the project team.

We focus on the high-priority, well formed requirements leaving the less formed requirements for future iterations where they will become more defined or eliminated.  This reduces time wasted on ill formed requirements that have no described value or acceptance criteria.

Product Backlog

These stories are then prioritized and placed on the Product Backlog by the Product Owner.  The prioritization of the User Stories becomes the iteration plan for the next release.

User Stories are refined and redefined as they more through the iteration process.  Stay tuned to find out about how to manage User Stories using the Product Backlog.

Questions

Are your teams using Scrum?
Are your teams using User Stories?
How would User Stories help define better requirements?

We have been talking about how Agile eliminates waste and adds value to the project process.  Remember the 7W’s (wasters) of lean manufacturing practices: defects, over-production, wait, transportation, movement, inappropriate processing, and excessive stored inventory.

In the previous segment, “How Agile Eliminates Waste (Part 1 of 5)”, we learned how collocated Team Environments eliminates wait time, transportation and movement.  This week, I would like to share with you how Iteration Cycles work to eliminate inappropriate processing, over-production, and inventory.

Iteration Cycles

Agile methodology is organized in such a way that it delivers project functionality in workable iterative cycles; usually in two or three week cycles.

Well-planned iterative delivery of functionality allows us to present fully functional features earlier.   Consequently, stakeholders are then able to provide earlier feedback on completed work.    The early feedback cycle allows us to identify changes early in the process, which eliminates inappropriate processing and over production of features.

Each iteration, also referred to as a production cycle, is organized to deliver one or more fully functional features. This allows stakeholders to realize the return on investment (ROI) for the functionality delivered without waiting for the entire project to be completed.  This is powerful!  This gives more value to the deliverable (inventory) and allows the team to provide JIT inventory processing.

Generating early feedback is the first step toward eliminating rework and unnecessary processing, which, in the long run, also saves time and money.

Each piece of functionality is delivered with an iteration cycle planned and scheduled, based on the reprioritization of the Product Backlog.   Stay tuned for next week’s waste eliminator, the Product Backlog.

Episode #15 – Jeremy Ross, Services Manager at RSA Corp, discusses how successful businesses are properly supported by technology. He explains how to reduce support and hardware costs, what the benefits are from leveraging software as a service, and how businesses can utilize technology to increase productivity.

Over the next coming weeks I will be discussing five ways that the Agile methodology can be applied to the software development process to eliminate waste. We use Agile here at RSA Corp as part of our custom application development methodology.

Waste is defined as anything that does not add value to the final product or service, not from your perspective but from the perspective of your customer.  The opposite of waste would be something that adds value to the desired result, for example more functionality, faster delivery, and higher quality.

The whole idea of eliminating waste originated from lean manufacturing practices which are based on the elimination of the 7W’s (Defects, Over-production, Wait Time, Transportation, Movement, Inappropriate Processing and Inventory).  Agile is a lean process that works to eliminate waste by removing unnecessary steps from the project process. It removes steps, reduces risk and removes the potential blockages that might normally prevent the project team from reaching its goal.

Team Environment

Collocated teams help us to eliminate three of the 7W’s (wait time, transportation, and movement). The close proximity of the team reduces communication issues and the time it takes to resolve issues.  Questions are answered quickly.  This eliminates the waiting game; reducing the time it takes for us to get a response to questions or clarifications of User Stories. Issues can be discussed and addressed quickly.

• We eliminate the transportation or movement of knowledge information, reducing the risk of miscommunication. Paired programming allows for collaborative solutions and faster switching of resources, should that be required during the project life-cycle.
• The team works as whole toward the common goal of completing the iteration.  Everyone’s input is valued and the team decides how the work will be done in order to complete each planned iteration.
• Everyone is jointly responsible for the functionality that will be included in each iteration. Each team member takes responsibility for the deliverable process and works together to formulate how to best turn the Product Backlog into the functionality needed for each iteration.
• Eliminating waste reduces frustrations and enables greater productivity and creativity. Overtime, the team will also increase its speed and at the same time reduce defects.

Interested in learning more about Agile teams? “Agile Coaching”, by Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley, is an excellent book that covers how to coach your team to become more Agile.  Trust me … implemented correctly Agile works!

Business continuity is the investment made by a business to be proactive in avoiding the risks associated with a disaster. Typically, this investment is an operating expense that serves as an insurance policy on an ongoing basis.

Disaster recovery is the plan associated with the reaction that follows a catastrophic event that disrupts the productivity of a business. This type of investment is more difficult to manage because it’s a “in the event of” plan that can easily fall through the cracks if not kept up with.

The two most important aspects of a DR plan involve sound, comprehensive planning and regular testing intervals that ensure the overall effectiveness of the plan. The most effective strategy is to give ample attention to both – mitigate risks as much as possible and have a solid plan to address the unforeseen.

Why is it so important to prepare for disaster now when Hurricane season is months away?

Given the geographic area that we live in, hurricanes stay top-of-mind when businesses think of a “disaster.” The truth of the matter is, several events occur each year within the walls of a business that could potentially serve as a disaster:

o Loss of mission critical data

o Power or hardware failures

o Disgruntled employees

o The list goes on…

The most important question to ask is whether or not your business can survive in the event of the unknown – and not knowing the answer to that question is just as dangerous.

Business continuity is too expensive for SMBs. What options do I have?

This is a common misperception among small to mid-sized businesses for a variety of reasons. The first is the lack of knowledge in terms of what options are available. The second is the possible impact on the business by failing to implement a proper plan.

Technology has evolved over the years to the point that what was once extremely expensive to purchase and manage is now far more simplified and cost-effective. In addition, several of the products and services associated with BC and DR have become commoditized, which drives down cost and creates a more affordable solution set for business owners.

Learn more about these cost-effective solutions in other blog articles.

Colocation – Disaster Recovery Toolkit: Business Must Go On…DR & Colocation

Online backup solutions – Disaster Recovery Toolkit: Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Your Data

Email Continuity – Disaster Recovery Toolkit: Can your Email Server Weather the Storm?

Too often, projects start without clearly knowing the work required. Even high-level requirements are not enough to gauge the depth and complexities of most projects. Low-level requirements bring more clarity, but experience has shown that it is often not enough. Also, the longer the project, the more likely requirements will change to match changing business needs. So, how do you ensure projects are completed on time and within budget?

According to Project Management Body of Knowledge, scope management includes the processes to ensure projects include all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully.

Traditional project methodology forces the definition of the project scope to determine cost and schedule. With so many unknowns, this becomes a challenge and is based on experience and rough-guess estimates. As the project progresses, new requirements arise and existing requirements become clearer.

Agile methodology eliminates unknowns by starting with a fixed cost and schedule, allowing for flexibility of scope based on the client priorities. Clients (internal or external) re- evaluate requirements and priorities with every incrementally delivery.

Requirements can be changed, removed and added as long as the work remains within the mutually agreed cost and schedule. This becomes a win-win for both the client and the project team. The project team gets early feedback on deliverables, and wasted time on unwanted features is eliminated. This client involvement ensures project deliverables contain requirements that provide the most value.

Agile is able to provide customer-driven scope and value-driven deliverables, resulting in positive ROI in a constantly changing environment.

How is Agile changing your projects?

Most companies lack good visibility into their spending.  Visibility into your spending gives your company a competitive edge by providing insight on how to manage and maximize cash flow, manage and forecast business costs, and monitor supplier performance. Studies show that only 4% of companies have a real-time look into their spending, and 69% have limited to no visibility.

Best-in-class companies utilize sound invoices and payment principles to define…

· Invoice handling and payment process
· The automation levels and integration of systems
· The costs and cycle time to process invoices
· The visibility or access to the invoice and payment data

The primary culprit is the intensive paperwork and labor invoice processing companies face to ensure an invoice is recorded accurately, approved and paid in a timely manner.  Take an in-depth look at invoice processing to reduce the manual processing of handling the paper invoice.  Whether the company is small or large, significant improvement within the invoice process is evident through an electronic paperless solution.

Implementing an electronic paperless solution provides significant process improvements and monetary savings.

Several benefits include:

· Reduced time to post to the general ledger
· More timely recognition of costs
· A lower internal cost to process and approve invoices
· Recorded audit trail to identify billing errors, fraud and abuse

The more the invoice cycle time is minimized, the quicker the company can respond to understanding spending trends and managing the cash flow of the business.  Knowing and having real-time spending visibility is one attribute to sound money management of the business.  It is a must have in a 24/7 business world to gain the upper edge with competitors.

From project initiation to delivery, expectations should be monitored and managed to ensure success. What are expectations, and who owns them? Expectations are a two-way street between the client and project team, brought together through clear and constant communication. Project expectations are the client’s vision of the results of the service or action provided. This can be stated or unstated. Either way, expectations are critical to project success.

A path to better managing project expectations

· Set clearly defined expectations
· Educate expectations
· Communicate and monitor expectations
· Execute processes for early feedback

1. Set Clear Expectations
Initial expectations can be (and should be) defined as part of the project initiation process. This is the time when the expected scope, high-level requirements and success factors are defined. The overall objective of the project is outlined in such a way that it is understandable to all involved.

Initiation documents define processes used throughout the project, including change processes, communication/project reporting processes, quality management, issue/risk management, development process and work plan. It establishes and defines a basis for understanding that can be used to communicate expectations.

During this phase, strong attention should be given to ensure that objectives follow the SMART rule of goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound.) While these will most likely change over the course of the project, the purpose is to define common processes, understandings and expectations.

2. Educate Expectations
Educate the client and the team on the agreed upon expectations and development processes as defined in the initiation documents. This way, each will know what is expected at the start of the project.

The conversions that happen as a result of the initiation process should lead both parties to a better understanding of expectations surrounding the project deliverable, process and overall results. Listening, empathizing with client’s business needs and indentifying the drivers behind the project will provide a better understanding of their expectations. Understanding and acknowledging client expectations communicates a commitment to the overall project.

3. Communicate and Monitor Expectations
Communication is key to monitoring expectations. Reporting on project accomplishments, issues and metrics will keep clients updated and involved in the project process. This will build client confidence and help ward off any unnecessary surprises.

Monitoring not only involves reporting on project status, but also engaging in constant listening and looking for feedback. Monitoring expectations requires listening, hearing and understanding the client’s business needs even if those needs are not apparent.

Communication paths between the client and the project team should be constant, as both parties need to be knowledgeable of the other’s expectations. Even the smallest decision needs can impact or refine expectations.

Expectations don’t stand still.

Periodically step out and check to make sure expectations are still lining up with the objectives. This involves communicating with both the client and team to ensure expectations are well aligned. When expectations do change, then a shift is needed to regain an understanding of the change and make the appropriate adjustments to ensure a successful project.

4. Execute Processes for Early Feedback
Several means can bring early feedback to the project. Early feedback can aid in clarifying and realigning project expectations. Building prototypes and/or pilot review sessions into the development process will bring to light issues and conversions at a time when changes are less costly and project impact is low.

Agile project process works to present and deliver project milestones in an incremental fashion. Clients get an early view of deliverables as they are completed, which allows them to review and input future concerns as needed.

Scrum methodology involves the client in defining which requirements will be worked and when, and lets clients reevaluate future requirements at the beginning of each Scrum cycle. Involving the client in this way helps set the expectation of the deliverable and creates excitement at being involved with developing something new. Instead of users being disappointed at the end of a project when the system doesn’t do what they expected, they have ownership in the process and become reassured that the project will meet the need.

What tips do you have for managing expectations? Are you doing anything different?

Insider theft is on the rise. Displaced workers are abusing their corporate data access to steal, exploit and damage information networks. In a survey of 800 worldwide CIOs, more than 40% agreed that displaced employees were the biggest threat to vital information. International companies are estimated to have lost more than $1 trillion in intellectual property last year. What steps are taking to ensure your most precious asset – your data – is protected?

“This is a wake-up call because the current economic crisis is poised to create a global meltdown in vital information. Increased pressures on firms to reduce spending and cut staffing have led to more porous defenses and increased opportunity for crime. Companies need to stop looking at security as a cost center but as a business enabler,” said Dave DeWalt, president and chief executive officer of McAfee.

Many cases of businesses theft and data loss go unreported due to embarrassment, public relations nightmares and the possibility of losing customers. This practice may soon be coming to a halt. States are beginning to regulate data breach reports. California is paving the way for regulations in data theft incidences by requiring businesses to report a breach within 24 hours. We expect other states to follow suit with reporting requirements.

In a recent study by CERT and the Army Research Office, multiple cases of insider theft were studied for patterns of behavior. These cases all included prosecution where public information was readily available. The study suggested that dissatisfaction played a major role in 39% of the cases with denied raises, benefits, applications for promotion, requests for relocation and the threat of layoff from within the organization.

Most businesses believe in protecting the perimeter of the network. Little focus has been given to the inside. Insider threats include not only misconfigurations of access controls, which allow access into applications or data that should be restricted, but also snooping employees, corporate espionage and disgruntled employee theft.

Although most companies don’t regard inside security as critical as external security, the approach to both types of threats should be the same.

1. Security Assessment – ensure your devices are configured correctly and your policies and procedure back up your security stance
2. Penetration Testing – check your systems just like and outside hacker would
3. Security Enforcement – knowing your vulnerabilities is half the battle, fixing them is the other half
4. Perimeter Monitoring – round-the-clock monitoring to ensure speedy response to an attack
5. Internal Monitoring – protect your business from attacks against trusted users

Since insider attacks are specifically targeted attacks, it’s risky business not to proactively protect your organization.

The Standish group reported in 2009 that only 32% of IT projects were considered successful, leaving 24% to be cancelled before completion and 44% considered challenged. For many troubled projects, the source of the problems can be directly linked to a failure in implementing basic project management processes. Let’s get back to the basics. Here are the five basic processes for project management.

Based on the PMI standards, as defined in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), these five high-level processes are a framework for managing projects and are scalable to any type or size of project. Each process builds on and interacts with the previous one.

Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, Closing

Initiating
This is the process by which the project gets started or initiated. This might be through a business case, statement of work or other document that contains the project scope, expected budget and acceptance criteria. The information contained in the initiation documents becomes the defining elements of the project planning process.

Planning
The plan is derived from the information included in the initiation documents. Planning for the project includes things like the Work Breakdown Structure (task list), Resource/Schedule Plan, Change Management Plan, Quality Plan and Communication Plan.
• The task list or WBS should describe the tasks needed to create the work
• Resource/schedule plan should plan the necessary resources and time frames to complete the tasks
• Change management plan defines the process of handling change to the WBS and subsequent initiation documents (scope, schedule and cost)
• Quality plan defines the process for ensuring quality work
• Communication plan defines how the project will be reported on and to whom.

Executing
Executing process is working the plan(s) that were created in the planning process. The plans are put into actions and the work begins. The execution of the plan may exist as one or more iterations of planned cycles.

Monitoring and Controlling
Monitoring and controlling plan(s) involves monitoring of work progress and budget spend, as well as controlling any changes involved in the Execution process of the project being executed.

Controlling of changes should follow the process that was outlined in the Change Management Plan.
Monitoring includes any status reports, matrix, or communication artifacts that were defined in the communications plan.

Quality monitoring/controlling, should follow the process that was outlined in the quality plan.
This also involves the updating and monitoring of any risks and issues that may result from the project execution process

Closing
Project closing process works to ensuring that all the work is complete, as defined by the deliverables, the initiation documentation and any resulting change requests.

This include getting customer sign-off for the deliverables, closing out the budget, defining any follow on actions and reviewing lessons learned.

While these processes may be familiar and simplistic in nature, they are often not fully implemented or practiced to a level that can be documented or repeated. This leaves the project to be managed without the basic elements that will help make it successful.

Most troubled projects can be brought back on track, by simply assessing the basics and defining the missing or lacking processes. Let’s get back to the basics.

How are these basic processes affecting your projects?

While we’ve seen recent indications of economic recovery, some are skeptical that IT spending will follow the trend. For the past year, CIOs have been strapped with tighter-than-ever IT budgets.  This week, Microsoft’s CEO offered his thoughts on why we will see growth in IT spending, but we will not see recovery. Here’s what you ought to know.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO,  stated that IT spending will not fully recover to levels seen in recent years in the short term.  Cited reasons:

• Capital less available
• Drop in server and PC purchases
• Tighter IT budgets

Well, I’m not convinced that capital is scarce.  It would seem that with increased corporate earnings from cost-savings measures, and with money on the sidelines for lending, that capital is not as scarce as some would like to believe.  Either way, spending has been scarce.

Regardless, Ballmer must have read last month’s Garter Group statement, which indicated that we won’t see 2008 IT spending levels again until 2012!

Doesn’t that sound horrible?

Not so fast.

If Garter is correct, 2010 will feel like an enormous improvement.  The 2009 forecast for IT spending is horrendous.  Hardware down 16.5% year over year.  (Side note, declines in new hardware purchases put a serious pinch on Microsoft, which bundles OS licenses with new servers and PCs.)  Enterprise IT purchasing down 6.9%.  Overall global technology spending down 5.2%.

Gartner forecasts a modest but respectable 3.3% increase in 2010 global IT spending, equal to $3.3 trillion.

While Ballmer and Gartner predict 0% change in IT budgets from 2009 to 2010, we at RSA Corp are seeing a modest increase in IT department budgets in 2010.  Plans are being made to replace headcount lost in the past twelve months and resume some projects that were put on hold.  On the other hand, we are also seeing companies work to extend the life of servers and PCs, which will continue to hurt hardware vendors and Microsoft.  However, everyone in IT knows that hardware will need to be refreshed eventually.  This bodes well for 2011.

In addition, we have reason to believe that while most enterprise organizations have implemented virtualization to some degree, many mid-market and SMBs are at the outset and plans are queued for 2010.

Personally, I’m optimistic for 2010 (especially relative to 2009) and will be even more so for 2011 … so long as the global economy continues to cooperate as it has in recent months.

But hey, I’d love to be even more confident.  Please comment on what your company is doing in the way of IT budgets in 2010.  Up, down, flat.

In the past year, most businesses have taken steps to “hunker down” and be a survivor.  Many businesses are taking the opportunity to strengthen themselves to emerge stronger when the economy fully recovers.

De-risking your business is a simple framework that can be used to analyze your business and adjust your execution plan.

Five Areas to De-risk

1. Operational Risk – Reduce fixed costs, which is also known as operational leverage.  Identify efficiencies, work flow automation and other ways to boost productivity.  Put processes in place so your business is not dependent on individuals.  Ensure that operational controls and approvals are in place for spending.

2.  Market Strategy Risk – Focus on your core business, which is presumably the most profitable and stable.  What can you do to improve service and value without increasing costs?  Be active in your business.  Sit down with your customers to understand their needs and how you can do a better job of serving them.

3. Business Interruption Risk – When times are good, you might be able to absorb losses from a business interruption due to catastrophic event,  system failure or even malicious employees.  Now is the time to make sure that your operation is tolerant.

4. Data Security & Compliance Risk – Now is not the time to experience data loss or compromised data security.  Reduce the risk of loss of critical business information and the risk of violating privacy regulations such as PCI and HIPAA by ensuring that audit, governance, backup and recovery, and security policies are in place.

5. Financial risk – What amount of debt can your business support?  Reduce debt load if possible. Refinance short term lines of credit to longer term notes.  Know the cash flow requirements of your business in both the best case and worst case scenarios.

Notice that I mention financial risk last.  That’s because you cannot understand the financial needs unless the strategic and operational plans are in place.

And remember, if you can’t transfer, reduce or eliminate your risk…then by default you accept the risk.

Technology executives are key business strategy players in today’s mid-market companies. In recent years, we’ve raised the bar for the qualifications for the ideal CIO. But, are our expectations realistic? Are we looking for a superman or superwoman?

I had to chuckle while reading Chris Curran’s analysis, “CIO Background Check: IT Experience Mandatory?” He makes excellent points and concludes that IT experience is a prerequisite for a CIO to be successful. He goes further to say that a dual background, one with both IT and business operational experience, is the best combination. I agree completely that this is ideal.

In addition to successful IT management experience, Curran lists broader skills and experiences that should be considered in search of the ideal CIO:

• Leadership abilities
• Hands-on technology background
• Experience in leading large change programs
• Experience in running successful IT infrastructure operations
• Management experience in a non-IT function
• Innovative thinking that can solve relevant industry and business issues
• The ability to understand how projects and operations impact corporate financials.

These comprise the ideal characteristics of a successful CIO candidate in today’s dynamic business environment. But what a tall order!?

I am struck that companies are looking for a CIO superman (or superwoman), who is difficult to find and even more difficult to keep.

Deloitte recently published the results of its global executive survey on IT talent, titled “Mind the Talent Gap.” (Author note: I recommend this study to any business where technology is critical to the execution of its business strategy) Survey results validate that technology leadership will be in short supply, if it isn’t already, in coming years.

Deloitte’s prescription for closing the talent gap is both challenging and expensive, but definitely high ROI for large companies. At RSA Corp, we are mindful of the mid-market and believe variations on the Deloitte recommendations will be required for mid-market companies to obtain the full value of technology leadership in an increasingly competitive labor market for those high-demand, low-supply skills and experiences.

Scrum has been around for nearly 20 years but has recently gained ground as a front-runner in the agile methodology practice group. Due to its approach to project requirements and fast iterative development cycles, Scrum will gain even more popularity as businesses are adopting lean processes, streamlining controls and cutting out waste. It brings a faster, more complete development modules and project owner involvement to ensure that current and future business goals are met.

Scrum is a value-driven management agile methodology that focuses on delivering small incremental batches of requirements within some given time frame and budget. One goal is to realize business value (ROI) on deliverables as soon as possible so businesses can make more informed decisions for future Scrums.

Scrum vs. Traditional Development Methods

Scrum methodology concentrates on incremental release cycles of useable deliverables. Requirements are placed on a product backlog list, which are then detailed into the Scrum backlog and pulled into a release for work. Project owners have full control over the backlog list and the priority of the work that is schedule to be done in each release. The release dates and budget for each Scrum iteration or sprint remain fixed, while the requirement (scope) remains flexible.

“Flexible scope” is a scary phrase for any project manager. In reality, when a project begins with high-level requirements and scope, the result is often different from the start. Throughout the project, the requirements are revised, changed and sometimes even removed.

With the Scrum methodology, both the cost and time for each iteration are fixed, ensuring budget and schedule control, while the project owner controls requirements (scope).

The process starts out with a backlog of requirements that the project owner prioritizes. Then, the project team decides how many requirements can be placed in a Scrum sprint. Requirements are further detailed and placed on the Scrum backlog. This is a just-in-time process for feeding into the Scrum sprint. It’s recommended that sprints run 1-3 weeks, depending on the needs of the project. The point is to keep them small, delivering working product frequently.

This allows for ROI to be recognized sooner than with traditional methods. Waterfall methods do not make ROI apparent until closer to the project end, which in some cases can be years. This makes Scrum a fiscally advantageous methodology for long-term projects.

Waterfall methods often result in systems that no longer provide the expected value because they’re out of date by the time of delivery or are in a never-ending mode of change. Scrum value-driven management helps to avoid these issues by quickly delivering high-priority requirements (as denoted by the product owner), which allows the product owner to revaluate the benefits of each requirement and adjust as needed.

Would faster delivery and ROI be factors in making a decision on a project methodology?

The type of security threats on our networks is escalating. While tools exist to detect security leaks, they have no chance against skilled professionals with a reason to take something from your network. Knowing where you stand in terms of network security is no longer an option, but a necessity. The numbers associated with network security will shock you.

Studies show more security threats come from outside an organization, but an increasing concern relating to several types of internal threats persists. CSO Magazine’s E-Crime Watch Survey found that overconfidence is pervasive amongst security professionals and organizations in thinking they have things handled. This kind of thinking is concerning given the recent rise in targeted, financially motivated attacks.

• May 2009 – Heartland Payment Systems reported a security breach that cost the company about $12.6 million, including legal costs and fines from MasterCard and Visa, which directly contributed to a $2.5 million loss for the affected quarter
• December 23, 2008 – RBS Worldpay, a subsidiary of Citizens Financial Group Inc., said a breach of its payment systems may have affected more than 1.5 million people
• March 2008 – Hannaford Brothers Co. disclosed that a breach of its payment systems, also aided by malicious software, compromised at least 4.2 million credit and debit card accounts

Social Engineering and Password Crackers

The E-Crime Watch Survey revealed that the use of social engineering techniques jumped to the number one method of committing e-crimes. This includes manipulation of a person or persons who can permit or facilitate access to a system or data.

Another change revealed that organizations with insiders using sophisticated technologies like password crackers or sniffers jumped from 17 percent to 31 percent. The evidence shows that while 57 percent of participants said they are increasingly concerned about the potential effects, a large number have trimmed IT spending by 5 percent and corporate security by 15 percent.

How You Can Protect Your Business

With the average cost of a security breach estimated at $6.6 million (ranging from $613,000 to $32 million), it pays to have a baseline of the environment, utilize IT security policies and stay up-to-date on trends. Focus on areas that pose the highest threat to your environment.

A recent article by CompTIA (Computing Technology Industry Association) says, “To address evolving threats, support mechanisms such as disaster recovery plans, dedicated security teams, security trainings and formal policies for responding to incidents have been adopted by many firms. These are supplemented by preventive technologies, such as firewalls and antivirus software used in combination. A growing number of U.S. firms are using other technologies, including intrusion detection systems, physical access control and multi-factor authentication.”

CompTIA’s survey of 1,000 IT professionals revealed their top security threats.  Which of these threats are relevant to your organization? What initiatives are you planning to address network security?

Small and medium businesses face challenges with evaluating, implementing and supporting the technologies required by their growing companies. They often turn to an IT partner to address these challenges. Just like an author tells a story, so should an IT partner translate technology into business value. However, many partners try to sell a solution composed of features and presumed benefits without really understanding the needs and culture of the business prospect.

I see this issue at every level, whether it’s network/server administration or application development. Over the years, I’ve developed an analogy to explain the disconnect.

All of us have learned to read and write, to one degree or another. However, this doesn’t mean we can write exceptional novels or short stories. The skills required in writing novels, short stories and technical documents are over and above the writing skills many of us possess. Simply put, while command of language and writing is a prerequisite for being an author, it doesn’t make you an author. The addition of talent and storytelling skills make you an author.

This is exactly the problem business owners and operators encounter in dealing with technologists. They need someone who can understand their business needs and translate those needs into the mix of required technologies. Just because someone specializes in technology, doesn’t mean they can translate it into terms that a business owner understands.

It requires a discovery process to uncover the business pains and areas where technology can make a difference in efficiency, workflow and process. Someone has to bridge the communication gap between that which exists in the world-view of the business operator and the minutely detailed, technical world of the technologist.

I’ve found that technical people who grasp this difference are better able to adapt to the needs of the business and develop the ability to communicate more effectively. Those who don’t grasp or engage with this difference seem to continue to struggle with delivering the results the business needs. It’s almost as though in developing tools such as EXCEL, WORD, ERP and the Internet, we’ve lost the ability to understand what the business needed those tools to do.

“Tomorrow’s CIO” is the subject of an opinion piece on sandhill.com. The author, Ashwin Rangan of MarketShare Partners, contrasts the characteristics of Tomorrow’s CIO and Yesterday’s CIO. He identifies three key areas of difference:

1. Goal orientation toward business values and objectives (read, measurable return on investment) instead of a check-the-box approach that leads to a company implementing one of each key software solution.
2. Business background, which means a deep understanding of the business operation, drivers and strategic direction instead of the tech savvy CIO with a technology mindset.
3. Open-mindedness toward innovative solutions instead of conservatives that channel technology investments only into the most sound, and often most expensive, enterprise software solutions.

I agree with Rangan, especially in the context of new technology approaches such as cloud computing, Software As a Service (SAAS), open source and Web application hybrids (aka mash-ups). Each of these four innovations (The Big Four) provide opportunities to your business. However, without the leadership of a technology innovator, your business is unlikely to embark down these paths, much less embrace them as ways to drive business value – reducing costs, expanding market share, entering new markets and building lasting relationships with customers.

Each of these innovations is or will be disruptive to your business, much like the Internet itself. However unlike the Internet, which was relative easy to understand and to envision its role in the future of your business, The Big Four are more arcane conceptually, more complicated technically and more difficult to envision. Consequently, businesses with the new brand of technology leadership are pursuing these approaches, whereas those that don’t are not.

Implications for Small and Midmarket Businesses (SMBs)

For many years, I’ve maintained that SMBs were disadvantaged in the area of using technology to support business strategy. Leveraging technology for the business is neither inexpensive nor without risk. In addition, the business strategies of SMBs are more focused and conservative by nature. This does not lend itself to diving head first into The Big Four.

Regardless, business leaders should view cloud computing, SAAS, open source, and mash-ups as the certain future and not the “latest buzzwords”. Much like the Internet, businesses will face increasing pressure from competitors using these technologies against them.

This leaves three choices and only two are good ones:

1. Invest in a business technology leader (regardless of what you call them: CIO, CTO, IT Director) with the characteristics above who can work as a part of your management team to influence business strategy and create real business value with technology.

2. Identify a business technology services partner that can help your management team navigate the technology alternatives with your business goals in mind.

3. Do nothing and pay more later in the form of market share and profitability.

In light of current economic challenges, I hope that your business has the ability to pursue one of the first two.

The existence of an underperforming ERP system is often recognized by certain elements within operations. The existing ERP system adequately supports the processes for which it was initially implemented. However, expanded processes are addressed through often manual means.

Underperforming implementations result from at least two different scenarios:

1. An ERP system is implemented for one purpose (i.e. accounting), but business needs outgrew the single-issue implementation.

2. Additional applications or modules are needed to address business growth. Growing companies often increase their usage of information contained in an ERP system, but sometimes fail to address necessary process changes.

For example, an ERP system implemented to provide accounting support is missing the module that provides source transactions, such as inventory issues and receipts. For accounting purposes, the recording of inventory transactions needs only to occur on a monthly basis. If the company subsequently attempts to use the inventory balances to support production needs, balances will not reflect what’s actually available at any point in time. The timing differences between accounting needs and real-time accuracy required by production and material planning cause serious process problems.

Addressing underperforming implementations requires company recognition that it has additional processes that would benefit from ERP system support. Like a broken implementation, addressing an underperforming system requires staffing what is often a smaller project than the initial implementation, but still requires many of the same specialized functional and technical skills.

What really matters is understanding the state of your ERP implementation to identify where you are in comparison to where you wanted to be, and consequently defining a path forward.

Defining a path forward requires that you:

• Investigate and evaluate your experienced business pains as reflected in your operations and processes.
• Determine whether addressing these issues was one of the reasons you implemented an ERP system. This may reveal additional issues in your organizational governance processes that need to be addressed.
• Investigate and determine what would have to change in order for your ERP system to address and resolve the problems.
• Generate support and commitment from management to proceed with remediation.
• Assess your in-house technology expertise and project management capabilities to determine whether an ERP partner is necessary.
• If internal resources are unavailable or you’re missing critical expertise…decide whether to partner with an ERP systems integrator OR individually staff a project manager, functional consultants and technical consultants to finish the project.

Smart companies along the U.S. southern coasts are testing their business continuity and disaster recovery plans in preparation for the upcoming storm season. For those who have outgrown their plans or struggle with outdated procedures, refining the plan is a top priority.

Companies invest time, money and resources to create solid business continuity plans in order to ensure speedy disaster recovery and enhanced information security. The planning process is a significant project requiring risk assessment, in-depth interviews with key employees, evaluation of business processes and technologies, backup and recovery strategies, and testing of the plan.

What happens when the plan is solid and ready to go?  Don’t just put in on a shelf. Make the information gathered in the continuity planning process readily available, as a business guide. This information provides insights into the inner workings of day-to-day processes, which gives you a magnifying glass over each business function.

Three Ways to Leverage Your Business Continuity Plan

STRENGTHEN INFORMATION SECURTIY

During the continuity planning process, executives become aware of which employees hold the keys to certain information. Some discover that too many people have access to restricted data and proactively initiate steps to tighten information security.

Conversely, some realize that only one person manages payroll, contracts or authorization of banking procedures, which prompts them to take actions to ensure these financial capabilities are backed-up. The plan provides you with a high-level view of your infrastructure, allowing you to recognize potential technology risks, track incidents more effectively, monitor assets and enhance control of vendors.

PREPARE FOR MORE THAN NATURAL DISASTERS

Don’t limit your continuity plan to addressing only natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Data breach, power failures, network outages, disgruntled employees, computer viruses and software bugs should all be accounted for in the plan.

Data breach is the first concern regarding information security. According to a study by the Ponemon Institute, the total average cost of a data breach is $6.3 million, but can range from $225,000 to $35 million. Lost business due to interruptions in productivity accounts for more than 65% of the cost.

REDUCE BUSINESS RISK

Review the risk assessment performed at the onset of continuity planning. It gives you information about significant circumstances that could impact your company’s ability to meet strategic business goals. This knowledge allows you to evaluate the significance of such an event, and then prioritize based on the likelihood of its occurrence.

Consider issues regarding environmental compliance, safety regulations, business interruptions, financial inconsistencies and lacking IT infrastructure.

For seven more ways to leverage your BCP plan, download our white paper “Ten Opportunities to Capitalize on Your Business Continuity Plan.“

Remediating a failed ERP implementation may be the answer to salvaging a broken, stalled or underperforming enterprise system. Each type of implementation failure and subsequent remediation project is approached with a different strategy. The goal is to economically get business operations and technology back in sync, quickly and effectively.

A stalled implementation represents an ERP system that never quite reached a state of production readiness. Various modules may be in production, but other critical components remain to be implemented or were never quite finished. In the latter case, the business processes defined for modules in production are relying on information from the unfinished modules.

The result is a variety of manual workarounds required to provide the missing information. Companies suffering from stalled ERP implementations fail to reap the benefits that initially justified implementing the system. They’re potentially saddled with processes that take longer than before.

This type of ERP implementation failure creates not only process problems but can increase tension between various departments. Those departments saddled with additional workarounds are forced to make up for the missing and/or non-implemented components.

Stalled implementations can result from:

• Staffing changes
• Lack of management commitment
• Obstinacy on the part of the non-production user departments

Challenges

Stalled implementations are often the most difficult to detect, in that the underlying issue is political in-fighting between various departments. ERP systems often redistribute work amongst departments requiring one department to capture information to be used later by another. This addition  of work to benefit another department raises the question of “why us?”

This is particularly true if workloads are high and pressures to maintain previously established performance metrics are unrelenting. If company and management are not attuned and aggressive in addressing this question, the resistance of one group can create problems for all.

Requirements & Commitments

Remediation of a stalled implementation requires a skilled consulting partner or contract team and a serious commitment by company management.

The company and its consulting partner must:

• Analyze the source of reasons for the delayed production status
• Make realistic determinations concerning the validity of those reasons
• Establish and agree upon a plan to address the reasons for the delay
• Complete the implementation of stalled modules

It’s the potential political nature underlying the stalled implementation that makes it amongst the most difficult to remediate. The challenge is rooted in addressing issues during remediation that the company and management weren’t able to resolve during initial implementation.

Remediating a failed ERP implementation may be the answer to salvaging a broken, stalled or underperforming enterprise system. Each type of implementation failure and subsequent remediation project is approached with a different strategy. The goal is to economically get business operations and technology back in sync, quickly and effectively.

Broken implementations are ERP systems in production but, for whatever reason, don’t work well enough. An ERP system is implemented and running, but business processes seem to be worse than before. For example, processes take longer and/or the system doesn’t provide the intended information.

Broken implementations can result from failure to:

• Adapt business processes to those required by the ERP system
• Capture all information within the system required to support the implemented processes
• Test the system for malfunctions
• Tune the system to appropriate performance levels, which are required by the users to effectively complete tasks

This type of implementation may not be the result of a single cause or exhibit a single problem. It’s for these reasons that remediation is often best structured as a phased or incremental process, addressing the more severe problems first and iterating through a succession of improvement steps.

Requirements & Commitments
It’s important to improve the value of the ERP implementation as quickly as possible. Remediation requires defining the experienced “pain” and outlining the desired results.

With this knowledge, value can be assigned to addressing each pain point to prioritize resulting benefits. This approach provides clear objectives, agreement on the process and measures for success.

Addressing broken implementations can be more difficult than an original implementation. Too often, failed implementations are caused by lack of project management and specific technical and functional expertise. The challenge for remediating broken implementations is staffing what are often smaller projects with the expert functional and technical skills required to investigate and then remediate problems.

Leverage project management to deliver the required results on time and within budget. Consult with an experienced integration partner to:

• Diagnose the problem
• Define the necessary remediation steps
• Assemble the appropriate functional and technical team

Companies with complex business processes have come to rely on technology to automate, digitize and streamline operations. In many instances, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system – SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, Microsoft Dynamics – has been implemented to provide this support. ERP systems were designed to automate and integrate disparate business processes.

When companies feel pain within internal processes or suffer operational interruptions, it’s often a direct result of a disconnect between the needs of operational processes and the technology systems that support them.

A key component in implementing an ERP system is a clearly defined set of objectives defining the desired outcome and project success. These objectives likely focus on addressing business pains and/or making processes more efficient.

If this is true for you, to what extent have you achieved those objectives?

Evaluating the original objectives for your ERP implementation, the current state of your process needs and the state of your implementation allows you to determine whether your implementation was successful and achieved the desired business results.

If success was not achieved, evaluation will allow you to identify problems arising from the implementation and demonstrate whether:
• Corporate processes are functioning as desired
• All intended components are operating as desired
• Process needs have grown beyond those originally defined and whether they’re supported by the current implementation

If problems exist, do you repair your ERP system and achieve return on investment, abandon it for an alternative system or live with the current situation?

For companies committed to following through with the initial investment, ERP remediation may be the answer. How do you know if remediation is right for you? Some business pains commonly afflicting companies with stalled, broken or underperforming ERP implementations are:
Business Process Issues
o Frustration acquiring data from departments outside general users
o Unnecessary workarounds
o Reliance on manual processes
o No process automation
o Broken process automation
o Process taking longer than usual
o Unable to perform some critical operation

Data Quality Issues
o Lacking data for important business decisions
o Data integration nonexistent
o Desired information is not available
o ERP processes and business operations misaligned

If your business is afflicted by any of those pains, your next step should be to discover which type of remediation is right for you. Whether it’s a stalled, broken or underperforming ERP implementation, each project is approached with a different strategy. The overall goal is to economically get business operations and technology back in sync quickly and effectively.

Database management continues to be a challenge for most organizations. The drivers associated with this challenge can be contributed to many factors:
 Mergers & acquisitions
 Compliance regulations
 Exponential growth
 Increasing challenges associated with forecasting market behavior as business builds a strategy to remain competitive

Whatever the motivational factors, having the ability to read and react at a moment’s notice is driving the pace of business. As such, businesses are faced with an important question:

Do I have end-to-end visibility into critical business functions?

If your business is like the majority of organizations within the current market, my guess is that there’s substantial room for improvement. A Business Intelligence (BI) application module bolts on to an existing application stack and expands horizontally across the enterprise. It integrates otherwise limited data silos to maximize the analysis, interpretation and presentation of business information.

BI is the solution set designed to address this key obstacle, which is limiting the full potential of business growth.

Two key factors to consider
From an executive perspective, the value of a BI solution is significant when you consider the end-to-end visibility and manageability gained from access to important business data for decision-making and multi-dimensional analysis.

Having the ability to capture information about how activities in various business units affect one another is key to developing a strategy that establishes value. In addition, bypassing data conversion results in faster answers and more efficient business activity.

BI allows organizations to strategically leverage data warehouses at a level that provides key decision makers with the necessary information needed to drive business processes.

Cost reduction is another valuable benefit associated with business intelligence. Having the ability to consolidate otherwise redundant infrastructure resources can have a clear impact on a company’s financial resources.

Consider the costs associated with infrastructure management and other IT-related overhead expenditures, as well as the benefits of data reuse. All things considered, through the proper use of BI applications, there is a clear opportunity to:
 Significantly reduce current and future operating costs
 Avoid complexities associated with data quality
 Bring value to the bottom line

Start managing data rather than it managing you
As you look to bridge the gap between where you are today and where you would like to be in terms of visibility into critical business functions, much time and consideration must be given to the development of a strategy that makes sense for your organization.

As you develop your strategy, it’s critical to involve owners, managers and users of each type of data and application in regularly-scheduled discussions. With their input and approvals, your organization will be in a better position to properly leverage your data warehouse, instead of it managing you.

As we push through into 2009, businesses will be forced to run lean and mean. During uncertain economic times like these, competitive advantage stems from the ability to anticipate and respond to change quickly and intelligently. This level of response requires organizations to have implemented metrics that allow for decision makers to have access to accurate and dependable data from their enterprise-wide operations.

However, some companies may be in a precarious situation if their business processes have become more complex over time and are misaligned with their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Companies may find themselves in a situation that warrants the question, “Is it time to optimize our current ERP to align with our current processes?”

Alternatively, some companies may find their ERP system is the cause of some misalignment in operations or is not utilizing its full capabilities. In this case, remediation is necessary to get things back on track.

Ask anyone who has been through an extensive ERP implementation, and they will hands-down agree that it’s an exhausting, financially intensive and disrupting exercise to avoid repeating at all costs. This level of disruption and financial commitment leaves companies an easy choice to make when it comes to optimizing or remediating their current ERP system over implementing a new system.

Remediation: Determining Root Causes of Current Failures
For remediation to be successful, businesses need to look deeper into operations than just information technology. IT is still sometimes viewed as a stand-alone activity used to support business processes. In fact, IT is a service used as any other tool, process or program to enable business.

Businesses should not proceed with a go-forward plan to remediate their ERP until the reasons and root causes for the current failures and breakdowns are fully understood. Determining root cause will be crucial for the remediation plan. The root effects depicted by asset vulnerabilities will have a many-to-one relationship to root cause. If the effects have a one-to-one relationship to the alleged root cause, this indicates that you have not determined the true root cause.

Generally, finding a one-to-one relationship exists when silo-structured organizations only look at the vulnerabilities in their silo. This can also occur when IT attempts to remediate without the input or assistance of the other business units. All businesses today, in both the public and private sectors, are interdependent with the other areas of that business.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Businesses engaged in ERP remediation must be cognizant to avoid failures. Necessary steps to dodge possible pitfalls include:

• Behavioral change. The management team must hold everyone, including themselves, accountable and compliant to the necessary behavioral changes that stem from the assessments. For example, if the remediation effort determines that executives must change passwords every quarter, then the executive team must abide by this and change passwords every quarter.
• Assignment of a truly cross-functional, expert team from both the technology and business areas. All team members must be fully committed to the activity without pressures from other areas, as this resolution is highly complex. The team will have a different set of ERP subject matter experts (SME) members, and a few members will be required to participate from the beginning of the remediation to the end.

o It’s also a good idea to comprise the functional and technical team of experts from outside the company with experience remediating ERP systems. This allows for a true, unbiased assessment and reporting of the actual scope of vulnerabilities to senior management.
o Failure to assign a dedicated team to accurately address the amount of time necessary to develop, gain approval, train and roll out policy, standards, practices and procedures will ultimately lead to a great waste of time, energy and money.

Once a company has assessed both the business drivers and the technical drivers for a remediation, it can calculate the ROI surrounding a variety of benefits from the remediation. These benefits can include:

• Reduction in server outages
• Reduction in bandwidth use
• Reduction in database management table repairs
• Higher staff productivity working on production-type activities
• Ability to handle additional applications without increasing bandwidth or server capacity
• Compliancy - SOX, HIPAA and COSO are just a few of the standard-based compliancy drivers that businesses must address moving forward.

Finally, remember you cannot do it alone. A successful remediation requires the full support of all stakeholders and constituencies working together for a shared goal. The time needed to conduct a remediation project of the size and scope indicated by the initial assessment is usually estimated at 30 to 48 months. Compare this to the 18+ months it takes to implement a new ERP system.

The time, money and effort spent will result in more integrated business processes and cleaner data for more informed decision making. Ultimately, optimized business technology allows companies to win market share while competitors struggle to keep heads above water.

When times are tough…the tough focus on streamlining operations through effective use of technology. For distribution & logistics companies, this means reducing lead times and inventory levels and improving the order-to-cash process. With time as a factor, efficiency of operations plays an important role in maximizing revenue and cash flow.

One Houston-based intermodal transportation services company decided to refine its dispatching process to reduce inefficiencies and minimize the load on busy dispatchers. Initially, the company reduced dependency on two-way radios by replacing them with BlackBerry smartphones equipped with GPS technology and the Comet Tracker application by Actsoft.

The application reduced dispatching call volume and improved fleet management and labor tracking by pinpointing the exact location of each driver. Comet Tracker also integrated with the company’s intermodal software system, Compcare, which was installed on dispatcher desktops. Integration meant dispatchers could find, track and dispatch drivers from one central location.

However, drivers had the burden of returning to dispatch between each run to retrieve work orders and security clearances. This inefficiency meant loss of time and money.

To streamline dispatch functions, the company partnered with a strategic advisor to engineer a plan and identify the necessary technology. RSA Corp engineered a solution to minimize travel time and save money. A process was designed to work with the capabilities of the BlackBerry using existing applications.

Bluetooth technology was incorporated with BlackBerry technology and a mobile printer to remove the need for the driver to visit the dispatch office to retrieve paperwork. A printer in the cab of each truck allows drivers to print paperwork without returning to dispatch. From the cab, drivers open work orders as e-mail attachments from the phone, print them from the mobile printer and use the hard copy to authorize release of shipments.

Process re-engineering resulted in improved efficiencies, which saved fuel costs, increased number of runs and ultimately maximized revenue generation.

How is your technology driving operational efficiency?

In a world where capital expenditures continue to climb through the roof, it’s essential for decision-makers to look closely at indicators (such as return on investment) and how quickly expenditures are depreciating over the life span of assets.

Technology is often one column on the budget spreadsheet that takes up a large percentage of capital expense. Hardware needed to adequately support a business’s IT infrastructure is an especially large part of that budget. What increasingly causes alarm is how quickly hardware evolves and how rapid the depreciation cycle is for items that eat up such a large portion of the budget.

This begs the question…How do I maximize the ROI in hardware to support my business needs?

The first idea is leasing and/or hosting your server environment on hardware provided by a third party. This, combined with virtualization, can work in tandem to eliminate the strain on capital budgets and allow your business to mitigate the risk associated with the maintenance and support of computer hardware.

Some of the most notable reasons to consider server hosting and virtualization are:
•Minimize Downtime – Vendor-guaranteed replacement parts
•Cost Effective – Low monthly payments that are easily budgeted
•Improved IT Environment – Vendor handles the necessary power, cooling and security
•Mitigate Risk – Vendor provides a service level agreement that protects your assets

A savvy business mind should see the inherent value in outsourcing this aspect of capital exenditures. This business model has proven to be successful in areas such as business copiers and multifunction printers. These both fall into the same bucket of item depreciation as it pertains to the capital expense being made to acquire the resource.

Computer hardware has always carried an adverse relationship in terms of liability versus return. Now we are finally seeing the emergence of a solution that makes total sense. Mitigate your risks, maximize your return on investment and protect your most valuable non-human assets…your data and the workflow automation that runs your business.

This solution continues to evolve and is finally at a point within its maturation cycle that the cost is attractive and the risk is minimal. Considering risk versus reward, server hosting and virtualization is a solid solution that warrants sufficient business attention, especially when trying to sharpen the sword and streamline operations.

What are your thoughts on server hosting and virtualization to maximize IT resources?

Have you ever come into the office and been blindsided by a horde of angry coworkers screaming, “Insert critical IT system here is down again!!” and no one in the office can work?

Enter our hero…the hard-working and dedicated system administrator.  He enters the server room and begins diagnosing the problem.

He says, “It looks like the server crashed around 1:00 a.m. from a critical failure.”

Now management is watching the minutes turn into hours of unproductive employee utilization while the IT staff works feverishly to restore service.

If remote network device monitoring had been in place, the IT staff would have been alerted immediately of the failure and could have responded so the impact was avoided during business hours.

While remote network monitoring is extremely valuable for alerting of critical failures, it becomes a strong value-add when used to proactively address issues before they create an unplanned outage.  For example, most platforms will generate informational warnings when hard drive space becomes low.  This allows the situation to be addressed before the server runs out of space and begins having problems.  Couple that with other important services, such as email, CPU and memory performance, network utilization and more to create a proactive approach to maintaining overall system uptime.

Remote monitoring platforms, such as N-able and Level Platforms, can also be used to automate routine tasks such as patch management, asset and license management, support and warranty service tracking and remote support.  Powerful reporting functions provide trending information of service metrics to round out the package, giving the information needed to fine-tune system performance and plan for IT investments.

Rapid and efficient integration of acquisitions is crucial to realize promised synergies and generate more capital to be back in the buyer’s seat. For companies with a weak IT infrastructure, seamless integration may seem unattainable.

In one recent case, a Houston-based master limited partnership (MLP) company in the oil and gas industry had trouble integrating acquisitions, causing a bottleneck in its growth momentum. Growth through acquisition is an integral part of a MLP’s business strategy. The company’s network infrastructure, security design and deficient IT processes created obstacles, congesting the integration of acquired companies.

To solve this business technology issue, it was necessary to engineer a network infrastructure that could support additional geophysical and geological applications, and support terabytes of new seismic and well data.

Engineering this infrastructure required specialists to…

• Design processes to migrate 12 business units, with 300 computers in 6 remote locations, onto a single network
•Analyze the data and security requirements of each application to support the new acquisition
•Identify and examine user configurations, data ownership and location, and security issues
•Create a plan to preserve and reconcile any issues before merging the two networks

Once the plan for the technical merger was created and tested, coordination was required among the MLP’s vendors and IT resources to execute the migration of the acquisition’s hardware, software and data assets. A custom software application was written to automate the migration of user accounts, applications and data into the company’s technology environment. Automation streamlined the process, guaranteed consistency and reduced the chance for human error.

With improvements to the network infrastructure and strengthened IT processes, an MLP is able to seamlessly assimilate new acquisitions within projected timelines. Executives are then able to focus attention to business development rather than on IT frustrations.

With the price of crude oil dropping below its yearly low, mixed with the current state of the union, how can oil and gas companies continue expanding production efficiency and drive further investments? It’s simple!

•Invest in key areas of technology to integrate systems and processes
•Simplify access to accurate information
•Partner with vendors that provide industry-specific solutions and are eager to form a “partnership-based” relationship

Given the exponential increase in the cost to explore, produce and service oil and gas, energy companies need to look at new tools to increase efficiency and maximize existing systems. IT departments need to provide a technology foundation that can support the increase in seismic processing demands, as well as tools that support the optimization of project and portfolio management.

Invest in key areas of technology that will integrate systems and processes
Implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages like Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards allows companies to seamlessly integrate business work flows, data and processes with the various business segments of the company (Accounting, Shipping/Receiving, Human Resources, etc.).

Simplify access to accurate business information
Assuming the implementation was successful and the users are maximizing the features of the system, oil and gas executives can require more from their predictive analytics and business intelligence tools than ever before. Investments in ERP remediation and/or post-implementation audits are highly advised, especially for those companies that feel they are not getting as much as they could out of their ERP system.

Partner with vendors that provide specific industry solutions and are eager to form a “partnership-based” relationship
Oil and gas IT departments should work with technology partners that invest in building a long-term relationship with them and make an effort to understand their business vision.

The partner should not only demonstrate competency in oil and gas industry knowledge, but look to structure its relationship as a value-added partner. Usually, this is evident by the partner’s ability to deliver highly technical solutions to your SPECIFIC business pains and challenges. A true partner will not only work to solve the problem, but will work just as hard to uncover the true business need.

To truly add value to a company, the partner needs to have a full understanding of your business and its vision before making recommendations to lead to the next level.

Are your systems integrated?

Do you have the tools in place to allow for your executive team to make accurate and timely decisions?

Are you working with a company that truly works at building a long term relationship?

Thomas Wailgum describes 7 Ways to Get More For Your Increased SAP Maintenance Fees in his Enterprise Software Unplugged blog for CIO magazine. His blog is based on ERP analyst Ray Wang’s report for Forrester Research. In July, SAP announced that enterprise support would increase from 17 percent to a whopping 22 percent.

All in all, I believe the advice is sound, particularly in light of the current economic downturn. Companies are and implementing cost-cutting measures to prepare for and/or react to reduced revenues in core business and more expensive capital, as born out by successful cost cutting measures by Pfizer.

Based on our on experience at RSA Corp, we’re seeing the same pull-back in IT spending, even here in Houston, where we expect the economic impact to be somewhat muted by the relatively robust local economy. (Although, I am still trying to ascertain at what level oil and gas prices will create severe pain to the energy industry players here)

The 7 tips are:

1. Fight for a discount
2. Quantify the value of SAP to your business
3. Assess the ROI for system support and maintenance, per user and per transaction.
4. Document the shortcomings of your SAP application
5. Evaluate alternatives for the long-term
6. Leverage SAP user groups
7. Evaluate third-party SAP maintenance alternatives

In my view, numbers 2-7 all support number one, negotiating for a discount. This is a sound tactical approach. More broadly, however, companies should continuously reevaluate their technology portfolio for potential savings. This is one aspect of Technology Portfolio Management – the process of assessing hardware, software and service requirements relative to the agreements in place.

Technology Portfolio Management is actually a holistic approach, proactively considering the evolving and future needs of the business. Unfortunately, most companies only react to the changing business climate or new demands by vendors. This reactive approach is inadequate.

Why? First, the timing of a reactive negotiation reduces potential gains. In addition, companies in reactive mode ignore other areas of potential savings. Moreover, the reactive approach fails to address areas of business risk, where service agreements inadequately support business needs.

I predict that technology portfolio management will receive increasing focus in the coming months. Building an internal capability or using capable experts in technology portfolio management, however, is the more sustainable and better long-term approach.

I’m interested to know how companies are addressing technology portfolio management and whether it has become a new priority. What do you think?

Deciding to establish new vendor relationships is risky, and even the most thorough vendor selection process doesn’t mitigate all risks.

One must consider…
•Execution risk – The chance a vendor does not perform
•Financial risk – The possibility that return on investment (ROI), for whatever reason, will be less than expected or required
•Professional risk – The chance the decision maker’s judgment will be questioned in the future and affect him or her negatively

How can a decision-maker alleviate these risks? How can the outcome be determined beyond ensuring good project management and status reporting? What’s next?

My premise is that a strong client-vendor relationship built on mutual trust will reduce business risk. Conversely, relationships not built on trust are inherently more risky to business leaders and their companies. Managers are responsible for minimizing business risk and maximizing business reward. Consequently, paying attention to the nature and quality of client-vendor relationships must be a priority.

Six Ideas to Reduce Risk Exposure and Embolden Mutual Trust

1. Corporate values start at the top
It’s always a good idea to build relationships with a vendor’s senior management. No matter how small your business is in relationship to the vendor, you should be able to reach a senior manager (general manager, vice president, C-level executive). Why is this important?

Corporate values start at the top. Interaction with senior management can affirm the decision to partner and instill greater confidence. If the conversation leaves you questioning the vendor’s values, abilities or priorities, you have the opportunity to reevaluate the selection decision…before doing so becomes difficult and more costly.

Confidence in the decision to select a new vendor is engendered by a comfort level with the vendor’s account relationship team and key staff involved in the project or program.

2. Trust doesn’t replace good contracts, service level agreements and communication
Before entering a relationship, make sure what will be delivered and when are well-documented and understood. Service level agreements are often under-documented, lacking detail and not understood by all parties. Particularly in a new relationship, it’s critical that expectations are well-understood through project requirements.

Equally important is monitoring progress against requirements and agreed-upon service levels. Good contracts and service level agreements form the basis for trust, which progress can be measured against.

3. “Trust, but verify”
President Reagan popularized the phrase, “Trust, but verify.” The new vendor should communicate regularly throughout the project or program. While it’s important to trust the vendor, verify what you’re being told by asking others…
•Ask end-users
•Ask the vendor’s account relationship team
•Ask the vendor’s on-site resources
•Place a call to the vendor’s management

Raise concern if you identify inconsistencies. Sometimes vendor communication among its own staff has gaps. The project benefits from being proactive in this way.

4. Trust is built over time through shared experience
Keep in mind it’s OK to ease into a trusting relationship. Like any relationship, trust is built as client and vendor work together over time. Trust is built when the parties experience challenges and work through them, collaboratively. Trust is built when the vendor meets its commitments. The best perspective is to view the project or program as a journey through which trust grows and evolves.

5. Don’t forget that trust is a two-way street
Don’t expect to build a trusting relationship with a vendor unless you are trusted also. While the vendors interests are subordinate to the client, from the client’s perspective, clients must endeavor fulfill commitments to the vendor. Small things such as timely feedback, clear communication, and collaborating on project/program challenges make a big difference toward keeping the vendor’s support and building a productive relationship.

6. Broken trust is a difficult fence to mend
Along the way, evaluate your level of trust with the vendor. Like a marriage, successful client-vendor relationships are based on mutual trust. If trust in the vendor falters, it’s difficult to rebuild. If distrust arises, consider requesting a staff change, or even account or project management changes. Changing vendors is always an option.

Broken trust is a difficult fence to mend. Often changing vendors is less costly in the long run. It offers the chance to build a new trust-based relationship without the baggage of the past hanging overhead.

Follow these steps to reduce your company’s risk and create shareholder value, two key objectives for all business managers.

What ideas do you have? Do you have some examples where these concepts apply or situations where they wouldn’t?

In the new world of the digital oilfield, data must be timely, accurate and accessible. Field systems such as field data capture must integrate with back office applications seamlessly and transparently. If not, several issues can arise, affecting data validation, data quality and business versus operation demands. To fully realize the value of existing reservoirs and operational infrastructure, better operational data is required.

In order for the oil and gas industry to effectively manage existing reserves and future oil and gas developments, it will be essential for business technology to integrate key operations with information and communications technology. Integrated operations and business processes allow for oil and gas experts, regardless of physical location, to make informed, real-time business decisions. Integration also enhances the ability to manage and control equipment and processes remotely, while moving various operations and personnel onshore.

When petroleum engineers, geologists, financial analysts and oilfield operations managers work within an integrated network – where field data capture systems are linked to office information systems – their executives receive a greater holistic view of assets and management. With more accurate information, executives have immediate access to enterprise data needed to make key business decisions, like optimizing assets in changing market conditions.

Several measurable benefits develop by integrating key operations with field data capture systems and back-office applications, through technology solutions. Benefits include:

• More accurate data
• Remote monitoring
• Optimized production
• Real-time technology for real-time decision making
• Automating routine operations to free up high-value personnel for more value-add work

The integration of upstream operations and technology drives a higher level of performance that statistically wouldn’t be realized otherwise. The end result can be a distinctive competitive advantage. Not capitalizing on this economic opportunity is a waste, which affects not only the bottom line but the shareholders and employees, as well.

How are you leveraging technology and IT resources to ensure more accurate data reaches key decision makers at critical times? What applications and systems do you find work best for integrating upstream operations?