Going…going…GONE!

Week 13 – WHAT the last week of the module? Well, that certainly crept up on me! We are learning about Grid/ Utility/ Autonomic Computing; Nanotechnology,and Quantum Computing. But I’m also working on a fascinating knowledge management project which will solve such issues at work that I can’t wait to make my assignment real! So the emerging technologies get rather short shift from me. I’ll just have to come back and do them properly when I am in the break. Am rather jealous of some of my Aussie classmates, who have a very relaxed attitude to studying and are taking the next quarter off  – “beach here we come!”. Well NTA has been fascinating…

 

One down one to go

Week 12 – Phew  – my assignment behind me. Wandering through the highways and byways of SOA in my workplace – how do we compare with similar companies world wide? Is there any competitive benefit to implementing SOA? What steps are we taking down that path? I find that our Gold Partner status with Microsoft may be limiting our Architecture although it seems to me that Microsoft has a pretty pragmatic approach to SOA and is certainly working in a very down-to-earth way on implementing SOA through the various solutions they offer. I want to see what CRM and Sharepoint could offer as foundations toward SOA-based processes. Meanwhile I am supposed to be studying Wireless security, Blue tooth and other ID verification tools…

 

Alice and other shortages

Week 11 – BPM Technologies and Software Development Trends are two topics very relevant indeed for me so I jump into this week’s course material with great enthusiasm. “we examine some of the technologies that are needed for BPM to fulfil its potential”. We are also give valuable pointers to articles which highlight and discuss the skills shortage which I am amazed (and relieved?) to find is global and not just unique to my part of the world. Used to be the ratio between computers and IT workers was one to one. Now the workers are outstripped by a long way. And guess what I find? A magic instructional technique to train object oriented programming called “Alice”..”a new approach to teaching programming. It features educational software known as “Alice” and uses a drag-and-drop method to teach object-oriented programming; it’s available as a free download at www.alice.org. Once students learn the basics of object-oriented programming, it’s easier for them to code it”. Well go on then – train everybody under 10 IMMEDIATELY so we can have enough IT People by the year 2015.

 

A Framework for this and a framework for that – ITIL, Cobit, ISO….

 

Week 10 – ITIL, CobiT and Other Standards/Frameworks as well as Infrastructure Issues – what an interesting topic for someone who has just drawn the short straw in terms of implementing ISO9000 into our company! I actually love the process of doing this, I just WISH there was nothing ELSE to do….so interesting to see how the various frameworks and standards for excellence promote different aspects of business operations. I’ve included a diagram I found in an article called “Quality Model Mania”. And what we learn about “infrastructure” is the key component – that it is shared across the business.I don’t have a lot of time for the infrastructure section because I am reading madly all the Frameworks!

 

SOA what?!

Week 9 – Hype and all that is horrid about our industry seems to be endangering the valuable concepts of Service Oriented Architecture. And equally inhibiting for the average CIO is the avalanche of terms, acronyms and sheer confusing standards that make up this arena. It was so interesting this week to compare all the contributions of my fellow students when discussing SOA in their places of work. There was a great variation from the Fortune 500 company which was using SOA to maintain excellence as a differentiator, to the remote government outstation that was struggling to hold on to skilled staff rather than launching into SOA.

 

Well there’s Architecture and there’s architecture….

Week 8 – and finally we move on to our textbook, “Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures” by Barry & Kaufmann and how these technologies answer the question of Integration – which has long been the holy grail of computing. We enter a very confusing conglomorate of “architectures” – enterprise, applications, technical, information,data, organisation…even industry people have a tendency to confuse these definitions. But Boar gets the ultimate point here:

“The information age is built on information technology. The utility of information
technology is built on its architecture. The technologies that are deployed are transient. The business functions that they deliver offer only temporary advantage. Architecture, however,has persistence as the organising framework for both technology and the derivative business function that is delivered.”

 

Innovation, Social processes, Human / Information / Organisational Capital

Week 7 – Sheesh this lot sounds complicated in summary! But all we are really looking at is a threefold subject. How do you innovate and how do you preserve your company assets (my favourite is this: “The mind power of an organisation is its most powerful weapon in the competitive arena today. Its collective knowledge, which is changing every minute of every day, is what makes it durably differentfrom its competition. The mental edge is a difference that cannot be copied, because it is as good as your people are today and growing toward being as good as they can be tomorrow.” – Guess what ? It is all about knowledge management! Some really excellent readings in this collections, that I think I will come back to again and again…

 

Business Process Management and composite processes

Week 5 and we move back to BPM to take a closer look. So what are “composite Processes”? Believe it or not, we are tracing the heritage of ERP, moving through to Web Services and then tracing further the movement toward Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs). In this journey we travel through Operations management processes; Customer management processes; Innovation processes; Regulatory and Social Processes.

Where composite processes weave their magic is in innovation. We can make a new composition out of existing technology assets. How cool is that? And that is really why IT Matters….

 

Operations Management Processes; Customer Management Processes

Week 6. Back to take a closer look at operations and customer management from a process point of view. Operations management demands that we:

° Develop and sustain supplier relationships.
° Produce products and services.
° Distribute and deliver products and services to customers.
° Manage risk.

In CRM we learn that “Many organisations have struggled with CRM as they have not taken a processcentric approach” – you have to understand how a CRM implementation reshapes your whole business, in fact.

 

Outsourcing and offshoring…how do you do it? SHOULD you be doing it?

Week 4 and a very useful review of the outsourcing trends underway – as well as the rates of success of various types of outsourcing / offshoring. You have to read this if you are considering handing over part of your current work to third party companies whether off shore or not.

We marry this subject with “Online Collaboration Tools” – a brief look at this enormously fast-growing arena, and how it is shaping the workplace. But what are the barriers? You’ve guessed it – PEOPLE! As the notes point out: “Collaboration is also about corporate culture and trust and empowerment. Many organisations have attempted to encourage collaboration by providing better technology tools without addressing the underlying reasons why people are not collaborating.”

We’ll be looking at techniques to address this too.