Who is Using the System? Tracking in the Enterprise

For years, web sites have been measured - and valued - by user traffic. Who is looking at this site? When are they coming, and how long are they staying? Driven by the advertising business model that values "impressions", web analytics have evolved in a number of ways; the interest has shifted from Passive to Active. Advertisers want to know who is clicking, selecting, comparing, buying, and abandoning. Games track Daily Average Users, Social Networks quantify contributions and visualize connections,…

Market Driven Data Quality (Data Darwinism)

A contrarian idea to improve data quality; let "market forces" like peer pressure, earn-in, and competitive prioritization encourage data owners to do their own quality monitoring.

Open Source Insights on Enterprise Software Business Models

A recent Slashdot posting pointed to a presentation from EclipseCon earlier this month, given by Brent Williams, an equity research analyst who used to be in the software business. A few things really caught my eye … Take some time to flip through the original presentation; there are some interesting insights about the nature of the enterprise software industry (the SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft crowd). Three of the lightbulbs that went off in my mind ... (Slide 10) [By folding…

Subdivide a huge project list to simplify the prioritization process

27 October, 2005
Business Value of IT, PMO
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A classic problem for many project-oriented organizations (IT, R&D, Engineering, Operations) ... how can resource prioritization be simplified, yet repeatable? It's a fairly involved topic, but a common approach is to group projects into a workable number of "chunks" ... we'll use the term Initiatives. How will this help? Challenge: Clarify the team's priorities, alignment, and resource levels - without going into the details The CEO asks a question – what Projects are on the to-do list for IT? [Do…

How Fun – Timesheets

In the early part of the year, we tracked our time as a group using timesheets. We don't use these to justify our payroll or anything, just an exercise to validate that we were properly apportioning our time across multiple demands. Also, we wanted to help explain why it takes more than one week of calendar time to complete one week of effort time. As I was scanning old emails, I came across the summary / findings note that I…

Components, IT Responsiveness, and the Rosemont Horizon

Technical people are often engineers at heart, and really want to see controlled processes in and around their computer systems. We see source code control, configuration management, and process documentation as ways to manage long term maintenance costs and deliver repeatable, reliable results from our systems. In the realm of ERP systems, this would seem to be a common and well-regarded mind set; however, the businesses supported by these systems often demand information transparency, process flexibility, and quick turnaround of…