180 View by Cleo Chmielinski – The author is CEO of one of Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies for 2 years running, Inbox Marketer.  What struck me about the article was that it reminded me of several owner/manager companies I’ve worked with in the past, where the entrepreneurial founder eventually comes to terms with the fact that growth requires investment in external help, HR policies, systems and optimized business processes.

Hear in their own words how they approach leadership challenges such as innovation, meeting customer requirements, balancing public and private concerns, global versus local requirements, product development, and motivating your organization to drive your leadership agenda.”

180 View – I did not have time to listen to all the videos. I do recommend Kevin Sharer on Managing Complexity and Andrew G. Ray on Align Strategy and Structure to Meet Your Customers’ Requirements.

You might be wondering why IBM did this. “CEOs are telling us (IBM) that the complexity of operating in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world is their primary challenge. And, a surprising number of them told us that they feel ill-equipped to succeed in this drastically different world.” IBM can help. IBM targets the CEO, which in part explains their success.

Still, not everything Microsoft is doing is a disaster. There are plenty of smart people who work for the Redmond, Washington colossus and there are several useful Microsoft products that are worth noting for those who follow business technology. I’ve put together a quick list of five things Microsoft is doing right that may have slipped under your radar…”

180 View – I think there are lots more than five things that Microsoft is doing right but the ones in the article may be news to you.

180 View – Although the author is clearly biased towards SaaS, he does make good points.

180 View – If you went to Gartner’s website and tried to purchase this document, it would cost US$1,995.00.  I am not sure why this one was available at no charge. Gartner is a good starting point in the identification of products to consider, but I would not base decisions on it. Gartner’s research as per their website includes but is not limited to:

• Vendor briefings
• Surveys
• Vendor-provided references
• Industry contacts
• Client interviews
• Public sources, such as U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, articles, speeches and published papers
• Input from Gartner analysts

It’s not based on hands on work or demonstrations but mostly on information provided from the vendor or clients that were hand-picked by the vendor. As well, vendors pay Gartner for their analysis. My suggestion is to do your homework and not to rely on the pundits.

180 View – There are some interesting statistics in the slides including IBM has 25,000 software developers building and maintain IBM’s software portfolio. So far IBM has left ERP software out of their portfolio probably because they do very well by selling and implementing other products. It’s also a fragmented ERP market today and it would be just about impossible for IBM to purchase or build all the products they would need in their portfolio. Per their website, “We work with leading companies around the world such as Oracle, SAP, Infor, and Lawson Software to deliver end-to-end, cost-effective solutions that are tailored to the unique needs of each industry. Our experience and methodology include strategy, planning, infrastructure and technical support.”

1. Scope creep
2. Asking customers what they want
3. Inability to adapt to change
4. Failure to communicate effectively
5. Failure to communicate frequently
6. Unwieldy documents and too much information
7. Hidden project artifacts
8. Ambiguous requirements
9. Failure to measure and assess requirements processes
10. Isolating your requirements

180 View – Although the article was written for getting requirements for software development, it also applies to getting requirements for a software selection project. The key difference between requirements definition in software development and software selection is in the level of detail.

One would not expect “asking customers what they want” to be a trap. The article claims that “customers tend to talk about features, not what they truly need. The truth is that people often don’t know what they want.” The article says the solution lies in asking customers why they need a particular solution. I agree with the problem but not the solution. It would be better to ask the customer to describe their existing business process and its problems. In this way, the customer exposes the strengths and weaknesses of the existing system, and the business analyst can suggest alternative ways to solve the problems. The business analyst should know what is possible in software development and what is possible in existing systems but also needs to understand the business impact of a particular problem. There is no point in creating or implementing an expensive solution to a problem that causes a few minutes to be wasted a week for one person even though the customer finds it annoying.

180 View written by Graeme Booth – In this article the author discusses how the United States Postal Service (USPS) has been urgently struggling with how to adjust to changing market conditions and reduce costs without real or perceived cuts in service by their customers. The author correctly suggests that such reengineering efforts need to be more than just the reconciliation of economic, efficiency and environmental concerns. What is also clear is that IT departments are facing similar challenges (on a smaller scale) to those of the enterprises to which they belong. And the answer may also be the same; when in doubt go back to the customers’ most basic needs.

Nobody in IT should ever say, “You’re my customer and my job is to make sure you’re satisfied,” or ask, “What do you want me to do?”

Instead, they should say, “My job is to help you and the company succeed,” followed by “Show me how you do things now,” and “Let’s figure out a better way of getting this done…”

180 View – The article assumes that the IT leaders are qualified business engineers, which is a big assumption. However, for those organizations fortunate enough to have this kind of IT department, then putting the head of IT on an equal playing field with the business leaders, makes a lot of sense.

180 View – We just found out about this site from Joel Martin formerly Product Manager for Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP products in Canada. I have a lot of respect for Joel who I once asked to speak at a CICA technology conference when he worked for IDC as a research analyst before Microsoft. The fact that Joel is involved leads me to believe in the Quest. If you know of a great IT project, I suggest you nominate the person responsible.

180 View – When you read the article, you may have some doubts about the “maturity” of the cloud which is still changing shape with the recent introduction of private vs public clouds and open source vs proprietary interfaces.

So what big Web themes might we see emerging into the next few years? Based on reporting and informal chats with venture capitalists, here’s a quick guess at what might be big in 2010…”

180 View – The author’s list looks lame to me such as the 1st one which is “The third wave of mobile applications”. I thought one reader’s comment was right on – “It would have been impossible to predict on Jan 1, 2000 that Facebook, the iPod / iPhone, Wikipedia, and Youtube would be just around the corner and have such a huge impact. In fact whatever pundits were predicting in 2000 as having a huge impact in the coming decade was likely trivial compared to the unanticipated things just listed.”

Called “Windows Azure,” Microsoft’s latest operating system is designed for developers to write applications in Microsoft’s .NET programming language. Unlike programs that require a Windows desktop machine to run, the idea behind Azure is to allow developers to write applications that will run in a browser and communicate with servers in one of Microsoft’s massive data centers via the Internet…

The big news here was support for more tools,” says PC Magazine’s Michael Miller. He notes that Azure will not just support .NET programming language, but also PHP, MySQL and a host of other popular open-source tools…”

180 View – It won’t be that long before Windows applications will be replaced by web based applications much like Windows applications replaced DOS applications for those old enough to remember. However, we don’t think that most large companies will be prepared to store their data in the clouds.

180 View – About 5 years ago, the buzz was about XML (would allow organizations to share their electronic data) and XBRL (same as XML but designed specifically to share financial reports). XML was going to make B2B eCommerce a reality for every company. For example, you would be easily able to send your purchase orders to your supplier who in turn would be able to easily read the data. Both XBRL and XML have lost some of their shine, but I would not count them out yet. The advantages of these technologies are too compelling and it’s just a matter of time.