November 2nd, 2009

Five definitions toward the maturing of Enterprise 2.0

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:14 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Enterprise2conf, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA

Tags: Apple iPod, Fragmentation, Enterprise 2.0, Conference, Miko, Enterprise, Michael Krigsman

The excellent Enterprise 2.0 Conference is currently in full swing in San Francisco. Given the excitement around this conference, now’s a perfect time to re-examine the “enterprise” part of Enterprise 2.0.

In this guest blog post, Miko Matsumura, Vice President and Chief Strategist of Software AG, offers a humorous look at the Enterprise 2.0 movement. In addition to his position at Software AG, Miko is the author of the book, SOA Adoption for Dummies.

Miko’s underlying message is important: to be successful, Enterprise 2.0 activities must remain rooted in the practical realities of real companies, processes, and corporate cultures. I share this perspective. Although the tone and images are funny, I assure you the message is serious.

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It’s a cool sunny day in San Francisco. I’m at the Moscone center where there’s some bustle around the Enterprise 2.0 conference. You can tell it’s an Enterprise conference because, unlike the Web 2.0 Conference, there’s no free pass even to the show floor. Also, the full pass is about $2500 bucks.

As I’ve been discussing on Twitter @mikojava and in my blog, here are my top five definitions of Enterprise. Feel free to chime in with your views via Twitter, email or my blog.

One way to define Enterprise is:

en⋅ter⋅prise:
/ˈɛntərˌpraɪz/ [en-ter-prahyz]
-noun

5. Stuff I wouldn’t do unless you paid me.

This definition puts Enterprise squarely in the camp of crime scene janitorial services. It adds a concept of “professional” to the discussion and establishes the Enterprise as the realm of uncomfortable clothing.

I recall reconnecting with Arthur Van Hoff after our adventures in Java and having him laugh at me because I was wearing (in his words) an “IQ Restrictor,” his parlance for a necktie. This definition also puts a dynamic tension between the “Suits” at the Enterprise 2.0 conference and the boho hipsters wearing the Emo Hair.

4. Software that sucks.

This was the definition I evoked in my post “The Human Enterprise.” To be honest, I introduced the idea of “The Human Enterprise” as a direct counter-proposal to “Enterprise 2.0.”

I think the piece that was missing from The Human Enterprise is the extent to which fragmentation plays a role in the essential nature of the Enterprise, which is a theme I’ve been addressing more lately in terms of the effect of sheer size on the Enterprise.

Read the rest of this entry »

June 29th, 2009

Enterprise 2.0: The Kumbaya irony

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 4:11 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Enterprise2conf, IT issues, Project management, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Tasks, Groups, Current Resource Allocation Process, Dissenters, Michael Krigsman

Last week I attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. It’s one of my favorite events, primarily because so many online friends attend from around the world and I enjoy their company. Despite overwhelming good will among participants, the conference exposed gaps between expectations and reality that continue to plague the Enterprise 2.0 world.

Enterprise 2.0 aspirations. Enterprise 2.0 suggests a network of organizational activities involving collaboration, cooperation, and engagement as part of a broader ethos of social interaction in business. Professor Andrew McAfee, formerly of Harvard Business School and currently with MIT, coined the phrase Enterprise 2.0. Andy recently blogged about implications of this new system of thought on managing organizations and leading teams.

Andy’s blog elaborated on a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Gary Hamel, which describes “12 work-relevant characteristics of online life.” The post provides a convenient summary of an Enterprise 2.0 view of management:

Read the rest of this entry »

June 21st, 2008

Social project management?

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 3:44 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Enterprise2conf, Project management, Tools

Tags: Project, Team, Social Media, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Team Management, Strategy, It Operations, It service Management, Management

Joe Thornley blogs about an Enterprise 2.0 conference presentation, by Leisa Reichelt, that discusses “social project management.” The premise centers on using social media — presumably wikis, blogs, and the like — to enhance connectedness among project participants, thereby reducing the rate of project failures.

Joe lists attributes of traditional projects:

• Top down: an extensive hierarchy with information trickling down. But getting the information back up is difficult.
• Gantt Charts: The bigger, the uglier, the better. Reichelt notes that these are enormously optimistic. How often do they have any resemblance to reality?
• Many stakeholders: The project manager seeks out all of the stakeholders and the stakeholders put in as many requests as they possibly can. One problem of project management is that too often it seeks to satisfy stakeholders. This is different from satisfying end users.
• Complex dependencies: Escalating demands leads to complexities which leads to delays.
• Risk registers: !
• Horizon & beyond timelines: Planning a project now that will be useful and realistic in 18 months. How often does this really work?
• Expected failure: This kills team morale. But is it all too common.

He also describes smaller, social projects:

• Small teams: a developer, a designer and a sweeper.
• Made up of smart, motivated people.
• Limited planning. Non-essential documentation and highly detailed specification are dispensed with. Sketching and agreement on fundamentals are the focus.
• Minimal scope: Less is more. Build less.
• Multi-skilled teams: Look for people with multi-disciplinary skills.
• Fast pace: Speed is essential to produce results within a limited budget.
• Rapid release: Take it out to the community quickly and ask them to participate in alpha and beta testing.
• Feedback: End user feedback is sought to refine the product.
• Responsiveness: Speed and close contact with users leads to quick reaction to feedback.
• Iteration: Constant change.

Since projects fail primarily due to non-technical causes, any tools and methodologies that encourage better management and communication are bound to help. Still, as Joe correctly points out, the social project management approach breaks down on large projects.

Although social media offers no panacea to the problem of failed projects, managers should keep an open mind. Social media does show promise to substantively assist project management, although it’s still too early in the lifecycle to know where the real benefits will emerge.

June 13th, 2008

Jive's Sam Lawrence on Enterprise 2.0: "It's a buzzword" [podcast]

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:46 am

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Enterprise2conf, IT issues, Podcast

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Sam, Podcasts, Internet, Michael Krigsman

This week’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston featured a host of small companies hoping to sell sexy, cool software to large companies. Many of these vendors won’t survive because they don’t understand how the enterprise buys, uses, and deploys applications. In this podcast, I asked Jive Software’s chief marketing officer, Sam Lawrence, to dissect the “enterprise” part of Enterprise 2.0.

Sam discusses the complexity of enterprise requirements and describes Jive’s approach to the “magic triangle” of early enterprise 2.0 adoption: IT (technology), HR (people), and Marketing (communication).

As Sam describes on his blog:

Next year I hope to see current vendors and new vendors focused on enterprise issues vs just sexy 2.0 farkme pumps.

Yeah, you get the point here.

June 12th, 2008

"Reliability is a management issue" [podcast]

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:13 am

Categories: Availability and reliability, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Enterprise2conf, Failure 2.0, IT issues, Podcast, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Podcasts, Cloud Computing, Internet, Michael Krigsman

The Enterprise 2.0 conference currently being held in Boston reminds us that mission-critical web-based applications require high availability. Unfortunately, some enterprise 2.0 application vendors take development shortcuts resulting in poor reliability, which angers users and damages the developer’s credibility.

In  this podcast, I speak with Rod Boothby, fellow Enterprise Irregular and head of platform evangelism for Joyent, a hosting provider for cloud computing. Rod discusses enterprise 2.0 reliability from technical and management perspectives, explaining shortsighted development and architectural decisions that cause cloud computing applications to fail.

If reliability problems with Twitter and other services annoy you, listen to this podcast and hear from an expert.

June 9th, 2008

Let's meet in Boston

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:32 am

Categories: Blog annoucements, Enterprise2conf

Tags: Boston, Blogging, Internet, Michael Krigsman

During the next few days I’ll be attending the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. If you’re there, please say hello. It’s always great to meet readers of this blog and discuss the world of IT failures.

June 25th, 2007

INTERVIEW: Paul Dandurand (CEO, PIEmatrix) on Project Failure and IT Governance

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:43 pm

Categories: Enterprise2conf, Interview, Project strategy, Risk

Tags: Michael Krigsman

At the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference, I was quietly eating essential nutrients (cookies and coffee), when Paul Dandurand, founder and CEO of PIEmatrix, introduced himself. Paul’s company is developing a process management and governance solution for IT projects, and he’s no stranger to this field. Before starting PIEmatrix, Paul co-founded (and sold) FocusFrame, and worked for Siebel Systems and Ernst & Young (now Cap Gemini).

I spoke with Paul about project failure and IT governance.
 
Paul, you’ve been involved with IT projects for many years. In your experience, why do so many projects fail?

The key failure point seems to stem from lack of deploying, and adhering to, best practices. I can go down the list of other failure factors, such as insufficient executive management support and establishing clear business objectives, and find many cases where the root cause for failure is lack of standard and formal methodologies.

How common is this situation?

Very. And I believe it will be more common in the future as projects become more complex and team members more dispersed around the world (i.e., hybrid outsourcing). The Standish Group Chaos Report found that the vast majority of large enterprise software projects are challenged in some significant way!

Given this, why don’t more companies do something better or different?

For one, many companies are just too busy dealing with fires and short-term priorities. Others have been focused on cutting costs, going offshore, coming back on-shore, moving to new technologies such as SOA, and so on.

Second, many organizations are not sure how to better implement best practices, and I’m not aware of any simple tools to help foster what I call the “sticking with” best practices. Most technology tools in this market are focused more on point solutions such as project planning or test case tracking. Even IT governance tools, which may include specific modules that work well, don’t focus on project lifecycle processes.

What’s the solution to implementing successful IT projects?

I’ll break my idea of the solution down into three parts.

The first is changing the mindset. Many firms spent the last six years cutting cost and outsourcing, and now there seems to be more focus in IT strategy, including reducing risk by improving central processes. I read a Forrester Research study that describes how AXA Insurance saved $150M over three years after investing in centralized formal process methodologies.

Second, organizations should learn from the great minds who have dealt with failures and success over the years. Industry best practices, such as PMI or ITIL, can make a substantial difference in reducing project risk. In addition, IT leadership will often find there are people within their own organization who can contribute to better ways for doing things right.

The third part of the solution is using technology to help foster enterprise best practices in a central model that facilitates both compliance and agility.

Are some projects simply doomed to fail, maybe as a result of organizational issues or politics?

The three solution components I just discussed “can” work for everyone, but as you say there may be organizational roadblocks. The most difficult issues to address are perception and change management. Achieving lasting change requires that value and benefits be made clear to all stakeholders. Executives must see value from a bottom line perspective and front line people must see value from an efficiency standpoint.

Tell us about your upcoming product.

Our team at PIEmatrix is focused on the issues we just discussed, and I believe our product will be the first on the market to help enterprises simplify the transition to better practices. We don’t position the product as simply another IT governance tool, but rather as a process management and governance solution that complements a variety of IT tools, including IT governance applications.

Our software will be hosted on the web as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution using Web 2.0 technologies and models. This is key to helping our customers’ teams, who are working around the globe, get on the same page and speak the same language when it comes to project processes and best practices.

The approach is simple. Our customers decide on project lifecycle stages, which we call the slices of the “pie,” and then loads best practice content into the tool as layers. These layers can include the customer’s own best practices in addition to standard industry content such as Six Sigma or the PMI project management process. Our “matrix” view makes it easy to work with multiple sets of best practices in an integrated manner. The matrix offers a detailed view where process steps, people’s roles, and project deliverable files can all be seen on the same page.

All this content can be managed centrally (or globally), and is easier to use than a wiki, for example. For executives, our dashboard displays project portfolio information related to progress in the projects being examined. This ensures compliance with best practices in areas such as Sarbanes-Oxley, FDIC, FDA, HIPPA, and so on.

When will it be released?

As we speak, we are moving into beta for our first version with a few customers, and plan to have the commercial version on the market later this year.

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June 19th, 2007

More on the Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Issue

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:16 pm

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise2conf, Implementation

Tags: Software, Enterprise, Michael Krigsman

As discussed in this post, I believe enterprise 2.0 implementation challenges are being overlooked in the rush to adopt enterprise 2.0 software tools. A session called “Driving User Adoption of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies,” conducted as part of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference currently underway in Boston, confirmed that belief.

During the question and answer period, the panel (to see the speakers, click the link and scroll down to Tuesday 2:30-3:30PM) responded to questions from the audience regarding enterprise 2.0 product deployments. With a somewhat self-satisfied tone, the panel suggested that corporate adopters look at training, establish an “elite” project team, and define a standardized rollout process. Well, it seems to me that the enterprise 2.0 folks are reinventing the wheel when it comes to large-scale implementations.

It’s totally natural that this new breed of software vendors would follow the implementation footsteps of their big-software forebears. After all, successful software rollout and adoption programs are driven by people and process issues: selecting the right technology in the first place, managing the process carefully, and encouraging those pesky users to actually use the new tools.

One CEO panelist described with pride how his company’s paying customers are welcome to call his mobile phone at 2:00AM for support. While I love this dedication to customer service, it’s not the kind of scalable infrastructure that enterprise customers demand when contemplating an organization-wide deployment. I applaud the enthusiasm, but more substance is needed.

Enterprise 2.0 products generally cost a fraction of their enterprise 1.0 software counterparts, but the all-important human dimension remains unchanged. And the human dimension is where software implementations succeed or fail.

(Lest anyone think I’m an apologist for big software systems, take a look here.)

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June 19th, 2007

The Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Issue

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:55 pm

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise2conf, Implementation

Tags: Deployment, Software, Enterprise, Michael Krigsman

Dennis Moore, General Manager for Emerging Solutions at SAP, spoke at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference about integrating web 2.0 technologies within the context of traditional enterprise applications. Dennis described how a seemingly-simple web 2.0 action, such as booking a meeting room, involves a fair amount of behind-the-scenes software complexity. In this case, for example, the software must determine whether the room is available, participant security access to the room must be verified, internal company billing must be handled, and the entire transaction must be journalized.

All this begs the question of whether enterprise 2.0 software implementations are actually less complicated than traditional enterprise deployments. On the surface, the obvious answer is that enterprise 2.0 software tools are simpler, and therefore they require smaller deployments. However, this simplistic response sidesteps the real issue: implementation failures generally arise from non-technical causes, such as lack of proper planning, internal politics, and so on. This is true whether we are talking about traditional ERP deployments, SOA adoption, and now enterprise 2.0.

As enterprise 2.0 products gain traction in the market, and the deployments become larger, the implementation issue will become increasingly significant. Please let me know your thoughts on this important issue.

UPDATE: For more on this issue, see this post.

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June 18th, 2007

"IT is a Leap of Faith"

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 2:19 pm

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise2conf, IT issues

Tags: Michael Krigsman

Andrew McAfee made the following comment in a debate with Tom Davenport at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference currently taking place in Boston:

“IT is a leap of faith and you are spending hard cold dollars in the short term on a set of nebulous benefits in the long term…”

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