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Thursday, February 28, 2013

2. Common Sense and IT




I have long thought that common sense is all too uncommon in IT.  While technology changes at an ever-increasing pace - fundamentals like common sense do not.  Consider the following mixed list of issues and ideas:

Communicating with users in English not Techno-babble
IT confuses users with an ever-expanding collection of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) which all too often hide the real issues.  I think some of this is because for many in IT, their comfort zone is jargon.  Communicating clearly in English requires a broader business understanding and more logical thinking.

A Picture is worth a thousand words
White boards are a wonderful invention.  Within a week of moving into my former office I had rearranged the furniture and had a 4x8 white board installed.  Drawing pictures and process flows is such a powerful way of communicating.  The actual tool - quadrants, swim lanes, decision tress, etc. should be picked based on the issue being discussed.

Elegant application design
As the famous architect Louis Sullivan once said, "Form ever follows function."  To me elegant design includes clean interfaces, logical structures, and reusability.  This is one of the few areas in IT where collaboration should, at times, be limited with a master architect being given broad design powers.

Ease of use
I spent three years as a user of a system I designed.  The CEO at the time told me "Everyone in IT should have to use a system they designed."  He was right.  While there was much that I was proud of, there were several points where the flow was less than ideal for heavy use.  That is an easy pit for a developer to fall into - testing that everything works correctly is far different from ensuring that it works efficiently and effectively for a power user.

Integration of applications and business process
The reason why almost all ERP implementation in the last 15 years have had process teams such as Order to Cash and Procure to Pay is clear - the connections between the business process and the IT application needs to be seamless.  Productivity gains for doing this well are impressive.

Over the coming weeks I will be sharing more thoughts on these and other topics.



Thursday, February 21, 2013

1. Why am I Starting this Blog and What will it be About

I have worked in IT for over thirty-five years in a variety of roles and a variety of companies.  I have always been interested in all aspects of IT and have often been amazed that the more technology changes, the more real issues are the same.   I strongly believe that a careful internal look will help avoid repeating the many mistakes of the past.

There is no specific theme to these blogs other than insights I want to share.  Topics will include:

  1. Why is Common Sense so Uncommon?
  2. IT Strategy
  3. IT Business Alignment and Why I think the topic doesn't go away
  4. Books that have influenced me
  5. Project Management
  6. Best of Breed IT vs. All in One Solutions

My current Plan is to address a new topic each week.

I welcome comments and suggestions for topics.