aqualung

No - it's "people AND process"

For some time now, Dennis Howlett has been calling BS on some of the wilder claims for Enterprise2.0, particularly those claims that suggest that it obviates the need for business process. Dennis cheerfully admits to being a cantankerous naysayer at times, mainly to counter the excesses of the utopians he often argues against.

A recent post on his ZDNet blog was actually a well-balanced and thoughtful look at the opposing viewpoints and how they might be reconciled ... however the title of the post posited a somewhat binary position, implying that it was a "people vs process" argument, rather than a "people AND process" situation, and that process should be pre-eminent.

Longer-term readers here will probably know that I subscribe to Alistair Cockburn's thought that people are key variables in any project, problem or process (Cockburn's article is directed at software development, but I believe it is generalizable to most if not all "knowledge work"), so I tend to think "people over process" anyway, but my response to Dennis' post was via Twitter, where I said that I was tiring of the binary "people or process" argument - notably I was tiring of BOTH sides; I think the framing is wrong, it should be "people AND process". Dennis very kindly added an update to the post, acknowledging the perhaps inflammatory nature of the post title.

I came back to it this morning, and made a bad attempt to explain myself via Twitter - Dennis asked for a comment on the post, but I've decided this is a better form for it. The tweets today:

my tweet last night was aimed at the other extreme as well - I understand your MO, and I thought part 2 was quite balanced ...

... but agree that social media utopians unwisely ignore the role (and value) of process

... my own position is probably more optimistic (utopian?) than yours, ...

.. AND I think that people are the single most important part of the equation (Cockburn: "first-order non-linear variables") ...

... but e2.0 cannot exist apart from the business it resides in - it HAS to cooperate/augment the process, which 'should' improve

I think this is a discussion that has legs (it will go on for some time yet, I feel) and value - I think working through some of the difficulties of demonstrating value to enterprises will get us to a much better implementation model for "social business" where the hype and charlatans are stripped away, and tools are put to the best use.

At the moment we "Enterprise2.0 utopians" need Dennis to make us clarify our own thinking - he plays an incredibly valuable role.

Enterprise 2.0, culture and resistant businesses

While I have no doubt the cases he cites are real, I wonder whether we’ll see broad adoption that delivers breakthrough value in the way Andy describes. Many organizations are deeply rooted in Taylorian time and motion thinking that brings the kind of hierarchical order with which many are comfortable. That has led to much discussion around infusing E2.0 into resistant business cultures.

via blogs.zdnet.com

Dennis Howlett reviews Andrew McAfee's new book and struggles with the thought that Enterprise 2.0/social media will EVER fit into some organisations, where McAfee is optimistic that it can (and presumably should).

Like McAfee, I am optimistic, and believe that most, if not all organisations would benefit from a more "social" approach to business. I am also realist enough to believe that there will always be some that are too fixed in their command-and-control hierarchies and power structures to allow that socialisation to happen. Where perhaps I differ from Dennis in that realism, is that I think that the resistance will cost those companies dearly in the long run, mainly in the areas of attraction and retention of talented employees, and the accelerated innovation possible when you open up to business partners.

I'm conscious, though, that there is no one "right" way to run a business - for every business model known to man (and a few beyond that) you can find successes and failures. In the end I think it comes down to something that Alistair Cockburn said (he was discussing developers on a software project, but I think it can be generalised): that people are non-linear first-order variables in any project; i.e. the individuals involved in (for this discussion) the adoption of E2.0/social media in an organisation are key factors in its success or otherwise.

The short form of that? It's horses for courses ...

The SAP Influencer Summit verdict from Dennis Howlett

SAP needs to get a grip of its partners who run amok with the on-premise product at premium prices. It’s still the case that the very best SAP engineers - who are invariably SAP employees - spend far too much time firefighting someone else’s mess, usually one of the Big Five (Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, EY, PWC.) Who gets it in the neck? SAP. The company has to decide what it’s going to do. It has created a great channel but at the same time it is a monster that often looks like an over indulged over fed child.

John Wookey gave a polished presentation on the work he’s been doing in the off-premise world. It was a refreshingly honest assessment and positioning of SAP as lead partner in customer engagements where not everything is wall to wall SAP. I hope he can deliver. The absence of conflating ‘cloud’ was particularly noticeable and welcome. SAP’s position on ‘cloud’ topics isn’t well articulated and at times seems uncoordinated but then by avoiding the problem of self inflicted definitions, SAP was able to keep its message simple and understandable.

via Irregular Enterprise on zdnet.com

Two things.

First: is it time for SAP to sell/implement the on-premise product direct to customers rather than exclusively using the channel? Increasingly SIs (particularly the large ones) are high-cost, low-value propositions, and (as you note) SAP often has to clean up after them - why not provide some competition and do the job right in the first place - at least it might cause the SI's to pause and reflect on their thin-value pricing.


Second: Should BYD be separated from the mother ship, in a spin-off into another organisation? This frees up the innovation cycle, and can have a different story to tell without screwing with the on-premise message. Keeping them in the same organisation makes them "neither nowt not summat" (an expression you might be familiar with)

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Business names

Trying to think of a name for a new business I'm helping set up ... it's a difficult process because so much of the first impression is based on it. There is also the potential hazard of working up a great name and finding someone else already uses it, or something close to it.
Short/long, what letter of the alphabet to start with, memorable, meaningful, descriptive, drop a syllable to be cute (or not), watch the language - I'm having fun! I'm coming up with a list that hopefully my colleague and I can reach some agreement on - wish me luck! 

Using Amazon EC2 to Thwart Crappy Internal IT Services

Let me reiterate that all three of the above uses may have put me in direct violation of my corporate IT policies. And let me also state that ultimately I found a job at a firm where internal IT sees their job as helping the business units get crap done. If you are an IT professional and you find your self thinking, “damn, I have to make sure I restrict my users from all of these crafty uses of EC2″ then, jackass,you are the problem with your firm’s IT department. If you see your job as stopping users then you are a useless burden on your firm and you should be not only fired, but spat upon. The way to prevent users from doing these, and other “shadow IT” behaviors is to provide the IT services that help your users be awesome!

via www.cerebralmastication.com

So - IT folks, are you the solution or the problem? If internal IT isn't supporting the business then it doesn't deserve its job ...

James Governor's Monkchips » Jumping Off IBM Connect 09: looking back

The Redmonk guys were all at IBM's Connect event. Among other things, James' take-away was

IBM is confident. Mills is confident. SWG is confident. It really showed through at Connect this year.

via www.redmonk.com

James and I have discussed in the past IBM's seeming inability to capitalise on its software assets (notably the Lotus stuff around Quickr and Connections and the Rational tools) - that certainly seems to have changed.

IBM is RedMonk’s biggest client.

I think Redmonk might be confident too ...

AVC.com is a "small blog" ...

I love it that Fred Wilson still thinks of his AVC as a small blog (I know what he means, but I think he compares it to aggregation sites and the relatively few "monster" blogs) - I'd be pretty staggered if I could get one-tenth of his traffic! I'm certainly not surprised that people get value from it ...

Hacker News has sent 5x the traffic that TechMeme has sent. I believe that is because TechMeme is largely focused on large professional blog networks and mainstream media whereas Hacker News is peer produced and links out to small blogs like this one all the time

from Anatomy of a Big Day on AVC

I've been a little quiet lately ...

.... mainly because I'm travelling in Europe at the moment. If you're interested, I've been updating friends by email, and I'm putting those emails on Tumblr, starting here; and photos on Flickr in this group ....

The Prime Minister, climate change and social media

<update> Rudd's response/summary is here</update>

I was one of twenty people who subscribed to the Prime Minister's blog and commented on his climate change post that were selected 'randomly' to participate in a Web chat on the topic. While some have expressed some doubt about the randomness, my inclusion would seem to argue in its favour ...

The raw transcript of the chat is here; Rudd has summarised the chat in an email to blog subscribers, but as yet I haven't found it on the web ... will link here when I do. One of the participants has blogged it already (and notes Kevin Rudd's typing skills), as has Craig Thomler on his eGovAU blog.

My take?

First, given the low baseline, I'm reasonably happy with Rudd's attempts at 'social media' - it's a bit of a trick trying to keep a conversation with the nation's leader from getting out of hand, so I understand the restriction on participation, and the moderation. These are early steps, and I hope Rudd is watching the success of Kate Lundy's efforts in the same direction (although it's probably easier for Kate than Kevin, given the relative profiles/workloads!), because I think that direction will ultimately bring greater results.

Second, I was pleasantly surprised that the chat itself didn't descend into either a spin-fest or an all-out brawl - there were elements of contention (not a bad thing) and some 'party line' stuff from Kevin, but all in all it wasn't too problematic. Given the time limits, there were understandably some questions and statements "baked earlier", most of which were worthwhile and took advantage of the chat being recorded for later reference. Once those were out of the way, there was more of a discussion between the attendees, with Rudd manfully attempting to keep up, despite that lack of typing skill :).

Third, I think there were some good ideas surfaced, and I think Rudd can take a couple of things out of the discussion:

• our performance/commitment at Copenhagen is symbolically important, and the outcomes from it are practically important
• the necessity for action on climate change is not universally accepted in Australia
• the arguments for taking action should focus more on benefits of a lower-carbon lifestyle, rather than the cost of the transition
• the science is still important, but we know enough to justify action to reduce carbon emissions (this is probably the most contentious point of the discussion)

There are some criticisms:

• as Graham Readfearn pointed out in a tweet today, Rudd avoided any discussion about coal
• he seemed inclined to bring the discussion back to energy efficiency (possibly because that's where the Government has some stories to tell) - not a bad thing on its own, but the conversation covered much more ground than that
• there has been some suggestion that the participation was weighted towards those who support action on climate change rather than sceptics - I don't know whether the "random" selection was, and I don't know what the proportion of sceptics to believers is in the general population, so I can't comment either way. What I do know is that my selection argues randomness, and there were sceptics involved, so it wasn't a "climate change love-in"

 

I will confess that I was as interested in the "open government", "social media" aspect of this chat as I was in the actual climate change discussion (I said I must have been a random inclusion!) - and I think it was a great attempt at opening up the conversation. Could it be better? Yes, but Rudd seems to realise that these are essential steps to remaining relevant to the public, and I hope he has been encouraged to take some further steps - my advice would be for him to talk to people like Pia Waugh (currently assisting Kate Lundy's effort), Stephen Collins, James Dellow, Craig Thomler and a bunch of people involved with the Gov2.0Australia discussion group.

Agile or plastic?

Last weekend I was reading an article on the human brain in the local dead-tree newspaper magazine insert (currently available online, too) and was struck by the concept of plasticity. In the case of the article it was particularly neuroplasticity, but my interest moved onto the applicability of the idea to organisations.

Achieving business "agility" is a hot topic in IT architecture and in management circles at the moment - that hopefully via some application of architectural thinking and some nifty software our organisation will be better placed to respond to changing business conditions, opportunities and threats. Agility is something I believe is possible with a well-executed SOA strategy for instance, but I wonder whether an enterprise architecture should be more concerned with agility, or plasticity.

In this context, what do I mean by "plasticity"? When talking about the brain, plasticity refers to the permanent and ongoing changes as a result of new experiences - as the above article suggests: my brain has been changed permanently by writing that last sentence, and yours has been changed by reading it. An organisation is not a sentient being of itself, but it is made up of humans, all with "plastic" brains - so the organisation's plasticity is potentially an aggregation of the people within it, and their changing experiences, and those individual neurological differences that impact on the work going on there.

Plasticity strikes me as being a longer-term effect than agility, which is more reactive (and not necessarily permanent). When looking at architectural abstractions, agility seems to come as a result of a tactical implementation of an architectural pattern like SOA, whereas permanent, foundational changes in the organisation's "brain" should come as a result of a more strategic and high-level enterprise model that offers an organisation the ability to continue growing and adapting over a much longer period than the next quarterly report to shareholders.

The strategic importance of the concept is this: agility won't happen unless you do something to enable it; but plasticity happens without any effort on your part - and the resulting "brain" may be sub-optimal without the guidance of a framework designed to develop the organisation into something better than it is now.

Of course, it's not a question of agile OR plastic - just as SOA can fit usefully into a more abstract enterprise architecture, an organisation can be both agile and plastic. I believe it needs to be both if it wants to last.