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My work at the BPMInstitute.org

I do a lot of research and writing for various organizations.  I have written a number of articles on CIO.com’s SOA Drilldown section.  Today, my first article was published on BPMInstitute.org. I have a quarterly commitment to write articles on BPM and SOA (SOAInstitute.org). This article was a case study on how CERN, an international scientific research company and pioneer of the world wide web, leveraged BPMS tools to improve efficiencies and control costs. You can read the article here.

If you would like for me to research any technology or case study for your magazine, web site, or company, feel free to contact me for more information.  I also work with clients to help lay out IT strategies whether it is implementing SOA, building a Center of Excellence, implementing Portfolio Management, or planning and organizing a business transformation initiative.

Managing Change in a Business Transformation Setting

I was invited to speak at a forum for IT executives in Detroit this week sponsored by Information Week. The purpose of the forum as described in the agenda goes like this…

This executive breakfast, specifically designed for senior business-technology executives, will explore why the pressure is on IT to help the business transform, and how it can meet those expectations. More than ever before, companies are demanding their CIOs to be strategic thinkers in helping them innovate and operate at peak performance - especially as businesses are under pressure from the poor state of the economy and the ever-faster pace of change in a global market. In this environment, you can’t miss this opportunity to gain insight into the tactics and strategy that will help you be on your best game.

I was specifically asked to talk about why transformational IT initiatives like BPM & SOA fail and what advice I would offer to prevent failures from happening. I put together the following presentation which is a combination of some of my previous presentations, Preparing for SOA and SOA & Change.

I wrote a very popular article on CIO.com a while back about the Top 10 reasons why SOA fails.  I speak to each of these points in the presentation and present solutions for each.  I also discuss using John Kotter’s 8-step process for managing change which I highlight in the presentation.  Here are my keys for preventing failures.

1. Plan for and manage organizational change
2. Key drivers should be business focused not IT focused
3. Evaluate internal skills and fill gaps.  Do not try it without help!
4. Don’t let the vendors drive your architecture.  Do your homework.
5. Grow your governance model over time

Speaking of governance, here is an analogy I like to use…

Implementing SOA without a solid governance model is the equivalent to having an airport without a control tower. Sure, there are some very good planes and talented pilots, but without the proper planning and timely information the end results would be disastrous. So make sure you build a control tower and hire some air traffic controllers!

If you would like me to create and present a custom presentation like this one, feel free to contact me

Does your staff have the skills for SOA?

I have been running a series on my personal blog about SOA skill sets.  Here are 4 distinct roles that every company attempting SOA must address.

1. SOA Skillsets: Part 1:  SOA Evangelist
2. SOA Skillsets: Part 2:  Architects
3. SOA Skillsets: Part 3:  Developers
4. SOA Skillsets: Part 4:  Testers

In addition to these skills, a company must include the security specialists, network and infrastructure experts, project managers, DBAs, and train people to manage and maintain the various SOA stack products that are purchased (ex: ESB, BPMS, XML Accelerators, registry/repository, etc.).

From SOA Slides

Investing in training upfront is critical because every role mentioned above must have a solid understanding of SOA for the project to succeed. If you are starting a SOA initiative and want to train your staff, give me a shout and I will be glad to help!

Leverage your Business Intelligence Investment with SOA

Here is a presentation I gave at the annual EDM Summit in Orlando on the topic of Business Intelligence as a Service.

This presentation is based on a real life project that I once worked on.  We had a scenario where the business had a very complicated set of business rules required to determine what inventory was available to sell.  Inventory for a loyalty marketing company is very dynamic and is not a physical thing like a widget.  Instead it is a data mining exercise comprised of many “What-if” scenarios.

The old way of doing things was to get data from many different sources, some from systems, some from spread sheets, and some from somebody’s head, and go through an ugly and error-prone process to determine what was available to sell.  The process took many days which puzzled the customer why we couldn’t tell them right away if we could run the program or not.  Through some analysis, we defined new and improved business processes and data services that would allow our sales people to enter numerous parameters on a new web UI and let the systems return information to the screen with potential sales opportunities.

When the designers brought their solution to the architecture team for review we saw a huge opportunity to change the approach that was being recommended for the user interface.  The designers were Java guys so naturally they recommended a Java web based UI (which infuriated the .Net community).  But as I looked at the multiple screens that they story boarded it became obvious that building a what-if type UI was not best served by building proprietary code.  Business Intelligence tools make a living doing just that.  So I put a hold on the design and recommended that we brought in our BI partner for a proof of concept.

To make a long story short, we proved with our BI partner, that we could leverage the BI tool to create a robust what-if style GUI which we could talk to all of the layers of our SOA (see slides for details).  In other words, we abstracted the BI tool as our presentation layer.  What that gave us was all of the bells and whistles that come with BI tools like:

• Flash enabled output
• Subscription services
• Mobile capabilities
• Alerts
• Great scalability
• Logging
• and much more

All of these things I mentioned above were out of the box features of the BI tool that we did not have to code in Java.  In fact, we offered to the business a much more efficient solution.  Instead of submitting data and reviewing rows on the screen, we offered to automate the business rules and allow them to subscribe to categories.  This means that they only needed to go to the system to tell it what to look for and the system would alert them when categories were available.  Now they could go into a sales meeting knowing in advance what was available to sell.  When certain categories became available they could get an alert and immediately schedule a call to the appropriate customer.  A future step could be to tie the alert into the CRM system.

So the key point to this story is that you can leverage BI as an abstracted layer within your SOA which will help maximize the value of your existing BI investment.

What are the keys to a successful SOA implementation?

I recently attended the SOA Consortium quarterly meeting in Orlando where they presented the winners of a contest sponsored by CIO.com that rewarded the best SOA case studies.  As they discussed the six winners, I noticed a common theme and wrote about it on my weekly column for CIO.com.

So what are the commonalities of these successful SOA implementations?

• Strong Executive Level Sponsorship and SOA Evangelist

• Educating the Business of the Value of SOA

• Established a Center of Excellence (CoE)

• Start With Well-defined Business Processes and Scale Up

• Define Completeness of Work within Services

• Quality Assurance Is Key

• ROI Is Difficult to Achieve Initially and Is Realized Over Time

• They all delivered Substantial Business Value

Click here to read the entire article.

Plan for and manage change

I have mentioned several times in the past that the hardest part of implementing enterprise initiatives like SOA, governance, enterprise architecture, SDLC (software development lifecycle), etc. is not the technology but rather dealing with people and change. Below is a presentation I gave at the SOA Consortium in Orlando last week that discusses how to plan for and manage change. If you would like for me to discuss this presentation in detail with your organization, give me a shout. Enjoy!

Are you prepared to start a SOA initiative?

There is so much to consider when embarking on an enterprise SOA initiative.  Many people focus solely on the technical aspects but don’t plan enough for the business and organizational aspects that need to be considered.  Here is a presentation that I prepared for a client that discusses most of the major areas to focus on before investing heavily in SOA.  Those that heed this advice will be in a much better position in the long haul!

Speaking at the SOA Consortium

I will be in Orlando on September 25th speaking about SOA and Organizational Change Management.  Go to my MadGreek Sightings blog for the details.  I am also presenting at the EDM Summit in Orlando in October on the topic of Business Intelligence as a Service and at the AIIM International 2009 Conference in Philly about a BPM case study.  If you would like me to present on any topics related to BPM, SOA, EA, Change Management, or technology in general, give me a shout and I would be happy to help out!

Upcoming assignments

Here is a short list of items that I will be publishing over the next few weeks. Be sure to stop by to check them out.

1) SOA Case Study on Service-now.com - This should appear on CIO.com in the next week or two

2) BPM Case Study - Still selecting candidates. This is for my quarterly commitment to SOAInstitute.org

3) EDM Summit Presentation - Presenting on Business Intelligence as a Service

4) Cloud Computing blog - Working w/Cloud Computing startup (name to be announced soon)

5) Zapthink Community blog - Come join the LZA certified architects and discuss SOA

The Missing Link in IT

To successfully lead an IT organization, one must excel in three key areas: Technology, Business, and People.

When attempting to implement enterprise initiatives, those leaders who do not excel in people skills will have some serious challenges.  For whatever reason, many IT leaders neglect the “people side of change” (listen to my podcast with ZDNet’s Michael Krigsman) and do not address a critical need - Organizational Change Management.

I am a huge fan of Harvard’s leadership guru, John Kotter.  Kotter has a proven 8-step methodology for leading through change.  Here are the steps:

1. Create a Sense of Urgency
2. Pull Together the Guiding Team
3. Develop the Change Vision and Strategy
4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy In
5. Empower Others to Act
6. Produce Short-Term Wins
7. Don’t Let Up
8. Create a New Culture

For more on this topic I recommend his books “Leading Change” , “Our Iceberg is Melting“, and also “Change Management: the People Side of Change” by Jeffrey Hiatt and Timothy Creasey.

And remember, now matter how good you do with the technology and business side of the equation, if people resist change your project will more then likely fail.

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