Blogging on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

This semester I'm back at uni. I was so grateful for the break - having time to smell the roses and rediscover life. The strangest thing happened - I got married!!!

I'm taking a subject called Innovation and Entrepreneurship in IT. As part of this, I'm keeping a learning stream in a blog at http://mikehansford.wordpress.com.

My current post is called "The right knowledge management strategy is essential to open innovation."

Iterative development – Agile is the late comer to this party

I’m doing some pre-reading for my Innovation and Entrepreneurship in IT subject as part of my Masters in Information Systems at the moment. Our lecturer pointed us to this guy’s blog. His blog is all about innovation.

A couple of posts stood out tonight.

1. “You are solving the wrong problem” (http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-wrong-problem/) recounts the story of Paul MacCready who was the first to successfully build a human powered aircraft. He collected a nice bounty for his trouble, which had stood for 18 years. The key to his success was his ability to design his aircraft so it could be iterated quickly and cheaply.
2. “Iterative design: Towards the perfect paper plane” (http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/iterative_design_isnt_design_by) tells of the author’s iterative design process for building the ultimate paper plane – a goal that he has spent a lifetime perfecting. He relates the problem of “design a better car”. What’s “better” mean? Faster? More fuel efficient? His conclusion is worth quoting here:

“As you design, you aren’t just moving towards a solution, you are learning about what problem your solution is trying to solve. So, don’t stop iterating your design. And more importantly, don’t stop iterating your problem.”

Why bother with strategy?

The following is a response I posted to a blog article titled "Four Reasons Why Productive People Hate Strategic Planning." The article riled me a bit and I couldn't help but post.

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Without a strategy, that is, a goal, how do you know you're not just wasting your time with make-work? The purpose of a strategy is to define the end goals and even some of the intermediate goals. It is not intended to lay out the minute detail of how to get there. Without strategy, you're just blundering about in the dark.

With a strategy, you should be able to answer questions like: "How do I know if I'm on track?", and "How will I know when I get there?" Like reading a street directory, you should be able to say things like "If I come across this intersection, I know I've gone too far but I can fix it by making the next two left turns."

Secondly, a strategy meeting must make decisions. That's the implication of the use of the word "plan." I'm betting that you've suffered too many strategic plans that make no decisions or make tactical, implementation decisions, or those decisions just haven't been visible to you.

Let's take a military example. A general defines a strategic battle plan, outlying broad but specific objectives. This gets broken down and along the line, a regimental commander is instructed to advance on a specific port and hold it to facilitate further landings. This gets further broken up and passed down the line, ending up with platoon commanders who meet the enemy and need to decide how to attack them. Ultimately, a section commander (a Corporal) is tasked with sneaking around onto an enemy's flank and attacking individual soldiers. To the corporals, the strategy is something that may be known but their concern is the soldiers immediately to their front. When you're pounding the ground, it's hard to see the far objective. I guess that's why generals sit up high in their ivory towers - so they can see the objective. The platoon leaders and section commanders have different objectives - take this enemy position and don't get hurt trying.

That's what strategy is about. By the way, I'm a pleb. Without strategy to guide me (or at least it guides my boss, who guides me), I'm just wasting my time and that stinks.

Goodbye to Easter 2009

Well, I’m back at work from the 4 day Easter break. I’m afraid it just didn’t last too long.

I’m flat out with my uni study at the moment. I attended two project meetings at uni, with the first assignment due on Friday. the ping ponging between subjects is hard going, yet I’m turning in some pretty alright results.

Both subjects this semester have been very engaging.

Business Applications and Architectures is basically about enterprise architecture. Mark Dale has taken the approach in this first assignment of having us dig into several architecture frameworks such as Zachman and TOGAF in order to discover how they’re structured, the role of views and viewpoints, etc. His intention is to give us some insight into the rationale and values behind various frameworks, so that we can evaluate their suitability to a project and select and modify them as needed.

Knowledge Management Systems is providing another overlay on top of our analysis and design methodologies. It is investigating the role of knowledge within an organisation, how it is shared and stored and how a knowledge strategy can be formed.

So all in all, my Easter has largely disappeared in a flurry of assignment writing and team meetings. My house is still only partly unpacked and I think a week’s leave to get on top of this will be sweet medicine.

Cheers

The uni semester starts on Wednesday night!!!

Hooray!!!!!!!!

I always get like this before the semester starts. I'm chomping at the bit and ready to go. As the semester drags on, I start to feel a little over-whelmed. 2008 was a shock. I hope to make 2009 a better year.

This semester I'm taking on Business Applications, which is all about enterprise architecture and Knowledge Management Systems.

Business Apps is taught by a practitioner in the field - a Dr Mark Dale who works at ANZ Bank and lectures part time. It could be really useful for adding some additional context to what I did with Enterprise Systems last semester.

Knowledge Management Systems is taught by a couple of staff members at the uni - Wally Smith and Rachelle Bosua. I'm afraid I don't know much about either of them yet. The subject will help to add some theoretical framework around my work with enterprise portals.

Woo Hoo! Let's get stuck into it!

Cheers

Thoughts on implementing Enterprise Systems

First up a disclaimer: my only experience with ERP is SAP and it presently amounts to about 6 weeks. So please SAP, don't sue me for defamation.

For me the jury's out on the value of ERP.

One of the major issues with SAP (and similar) is that can force a business process to change to match the software's built-in (ahem!) "best practices." Best practice is a marketing term that helps to sell things. A more accurate term would be "sound practice."

While there are often many things in common between businesses (especially within the same industry), there are going to be differences. Perhaps these can be because of a business's culture. Culture isn't just an overlay; rather it's at the core of a business and it affects the way a company goes about its business.

In the case of ERP systems like SAP, they are flexible to an extent in how their business processes can be configured but ultimately, the business will have to flex too.

Before starting my masters, I thought that if IT gets in the way of the business process, then the IT is wrong. I think I need to revise it, adding that the business process must contribute value to the business or the business process is wrong.

So let's revise this: If IT gets in the way of a sound business practice that contributes value to the business, then the IT is wrong. It will be interesting to see how this view changes over time. As the semester is progressing, I'm finding that this is the key problem that I keep returning to.

So what would be my advice to someone looking to implement ERP? It would be that implementing ERP won't magically turn the Titanic into the QE2. If your business is heading full speed towards an iceberg, ERP won't save you. It will however, give you a real-time picture of your ship being smashed to a pulp by that little old iceberg and will probably give the duly appointed administrator a decent head-start on salvaging the wreck. I would add that the scope of an ERP implementation is so big it's scary and that you need to evaluate carefully whether there is value in abandoning sound business practices for the practices that an ERP system will impose. The extent of the process changes will have a bearing, possibly a large bearing on the short term hit your business will take in the wake of go-live.

Week 2 at Uni

I've bitten off quite a bit this semester.

Enterprise Systems has a lot of work. My first assignment is due on Friday next week. I need to review 4 webcasts from SAP's SAPphire 2008 and write an additional 1500 words or so to tie them up. Thankfully I'm feeling more confident after today's class. The interface also feels like it's UNIX heritage would suggest. It's built for speed that's for sure. All in all, there's a ton of info to consume here.

IS Project and Change Management (ISPCM) sounds familiar from my Business Analysis subject from last semester, so should be easier. It should be an OK subject and thankfully not the same amount of work (I think) as Enterprise Systems.

Well I'd better be getting back to it.

Cheers
Mike

Uni's back for Semester 2 2008

This is my second semester of my Masters in Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. For anyone who asks, I wanted something to do with another 20 hours of the week, so I went back to part time study.

Last semester I only took one subject - Business Analysis Modelling and Design after having been sick in February. I did pretty well and scored first class honours (H1). Not a bad effort.

This semester I've taken two subjects Enterprise Systems and Information Systems Project and Change Management. I'll blog about them here as it will help to get my thoughts sorted out.

I've had classes for both now. Enterprise Systems is the most interesting immediately. It's based on Packaged Enterprise Application Software apps such as:

• Enterprise Resource Management (ERM)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• and others

We're using SAP in order to gain some practical experience. There's little point in just talking about them. I can't imagine we'll actually be much good but will have at least had some exposure to the software.

Project and Change Management I hope will be good as it progresses.