IT Services Cincinnati

Its good to see Cincinnati and Dayton area companies starting to embrace open source as an alternative to custom application development.  As an IT Strategy consultant, I can say there is a place for both.

STAR BASE, Inc. just landed another Magento project.  I have written about Magento before and this post has links to several others.   These are not your father’s shareware packages. The packages we are working with are what I’m calling Commercial Open Source. 

I’m curious, why have you or your company not implemented an open source option?  Is it because the light at the end of the tunnel looks more like a train?  Maybe we’re just ahead of the curve again and I need a little bit of Patience.

 

I attended the first meeting of the season for the Cincinnati IIBA^® Chapter. They are doing a series entitled CIO Speaker Series, where they have the CIO from prominent companies in the Cincinnati area who have demonstrated a solid commitment to promoting the effective practice of Business Analysis in their organizations come and speak on how that commitment is put into practice within their organization.

Now I really thought this was going to be boring but the speaker; Jeff Wolverton, Senior VP and CIO of Great American Financial Resources, Inc. (GAFRI), captured my attention when he spoke about how he used the area of Business Analysis to turn his IT organization around and assist them in providing better IT business solutions.

Jeff has been with GAFRI for 11 years and has held the position of CIO for the past 8 years, but they have really put an emphasis on the area of Business Analysis and have begun to reap the benefits thereof here in the last year and a half.

He demonstrated how putting Business Analysis first changed the reputation of his IT staff within the organization from an IT production support group that is slow in delivering business applications that are often bug ridden, to an IT staff that develops great business application solutions that work for the business. GAFRI IT staff went from delivering solutions and telling the business to report any bugs found and they will fix them to delivering business solutions where they had found 85% of all bugs prior to user acceptance testing.

Jeff also spoke about how in last year’s economy where IT budgets in most organizations were being slashed, he received a double-digit increase; the largest increase in his 8 years as CIO. So how do you get that kind of budget increase and turn around the reputation of your IT staff and the business application solutions that they deliver? GAFRI did it by getting to the business requirements behind the business requests and implementing a systematic, repeatable project delivery process.

Jeff and his team put into place a new IT business solutions delivery process from the requirements gathering phase to project delivery (implementation). This new process was going to take much longer than the old process. What use to take a week will now take two to four weeks.  How do you get business buy-in to wait for their business applications? When you deliver a business application solution in which the business usually reports several bugs during testing to delivering a solution in which the business reports almost no bugs, they see value in the new process.

GAFRI’s new IT business solution delivery process put emphasis on two areas: requirements gathering and application testing. They created new roles within their IT staff and put people in place with very specific duties to gain measurable increased value in these areas. They not only put IT staff through training, but they put the business through training on the new delivery process and the business role on working with the IT staff to drive better IT business solutions.

The first new IT role is the Requirements Analyst. This person works with the business in the beginning of the project to elicit and form clear and concise business requirements for the IT business solution. So many times when IT delivers a project they get the punch line to that Dr. Seuss rhyme about the Super Programmer, where the requester says ‘You gave me just what I asked for but not what I need!’. The Requirements Analyst works throughout the project, in a diminishing role, to ensure that the IT solution will meet the needs of the business.

The second new IT role created is the Test Analyst. Typically, testing is thought of after development is complete or nearing completion. In GAFRI’s model test plans are created before or as development starts and are based on the business requirements of the project. The Test Analyst either performs or supports IT Quality Assurance testing and supports User Acceptance Testing.

GAFRI is a shining example of how commitment to the area of Business Analysis can reap many benefits for the organization, both for IT and the business. The end result is better IT business solutions.

• Network security specialist: A person familiar with intrusion detection systems.
• Penetration testers: Someone who can assess a system's potential vulnerabilities.
• Incident handlers: People who understand attack methodology and can apply critical thinking skills to respond to incidents.
• Forensics Analyst: The person who looks for evidence after an attack.
• Research Analyst: The person to keep abreast technological advances in incident response activities.
• Team Leader: Leads the team through crises and communicates to the business incident activities and cost to the business.

• Preparation and Training: for both prevention and incident response.
• Identification: fast identification of an occurring attack and its impact on the IT infrastructure can help in minimizing the duration and cost of clean-up.
• Containment: Once an attack has been identified, steps must be taken to minimize the effects of the attack.
• Recovery and Analysis: The recovery period allows analysis and lessons learned of What happened? Why did it happened? Was the response effective?

“You can program yourself to be positive. Being Positive is a discipline … and the more adversity you face, the more positive you have to be. Being positive helps build confidence and self-esteem”  --Rick Pitino, University of Louisville Head Basketball Coach

In part one; I introduced the concept of being mentally tough in today’s economic climate.  This applies not only to IT jobs, but to any job.

Developing Mental Toughness

1. Starts with the right attitude and state of mind.  You need to know what your core confidence is all about.  Confidence comes in knowing you are prepared and courage to make hard decisions.  As long as no one dies, thing will probably be OK. 
2. Program your mind for success ahead of time with positive affirmations and expectations.   Expect the best from yourself; affirm what it is you are going to do to be successful.  Use goal oriented statements starting with “I will, I can, I am going to…
Focus on those things you want to occur, rather than things you’re afraid might go wrong. (I have been reminded recently it’s OK to have a plan B or a back up plan).
3. Make your behaviors routine.   Develop a systematic routine that clicks on desired mental-emotional state of mind. 
4. Poise and Composure:  Learn how to let go of mistakes quickly if things do not go the way you want.  The key part of mental training is about compensating, adjusting, and trusting.  If plan A does not work, go to plan B or C (See above.).  Be persistent and mentally tough; don’t allow frustration to undermine your confidence/focus. 
5. Take control of Negative Self-Talk: Reframe “stinking thinking” into positive task oriented suggestions.  Being aware of situations that cause you to get frustrated, rushed, intimidated, lose focus is a good first step. Then reframe the negativity into positive, mentally tough self-suggestions.  For example, in basketball instead of “I can’t hit that shot if my life depended on it”, let go, reframe it back into something more positive and task oriented “get a good look at the basket, see it, feel it, trust it”.  When I was doing a lot of application development, I can tell you how many times I was able to solve a problem just by talking to some one else. 
6. Look at failure as a stepping stone for future achievement.  Michael Jordan missed 9000 shots, missed 26 game winning shots, lost 300 games, yet he was a6 time NBA World Champion. He said that, “I failed over and over, that is why I succeed”.
7. Be a difference maker, step up when it matters the most.  Life is all about risks and it requires you to jump. Don't be a person who has to look back and wonder what they would have or could have done.  Nothing is forever.

As an enterprise application development team member, I have had a long history with both companies. I started in this business with IBM’s CICS and COBOL. Publishing one update every 10 years or so, COBOL could not compete with the newer languages of the time (Java). IBM only started looking at viable additions or enhancements after losing lots of business. Having seen what IBM did with their languages, the outlook is not so rosy with Java. I also came from a vendor (Silverstream), which took Java and created proprietary extensions. When Silverstream got bought out by Novell and disappeared, my focus was to convince employers that I did in fact know Java. Since then, I have had a personal dislike for non-standard "enhancements" to technology. IBM’s WebSphere falls directly into that category. Taking a perfectly usable Apache web container and adding "enhancements" so it doesn’t follow apache documentation, but needs IBM support makes me angry. Their JDK implementation leaves many things to be desired. IBM has a history of taking open source technologies and contorting them so only IBM trained personnel can use them. To most application development team guys, IBM is a huge thorn in their sides. It is management not IT that purchases big blue.
It’s not just Java, but many of my other favorite technologies that IBM may toss. Glassfish is a free, easy to use application server that uses the latest EE5 code base. WebSphere 7.0 has been recently released to use IBM’s EE5 edition. 2 years after Glassfish! I am a long time MySQL user, I don’t ever want to use DB2. I can’t imagine using DB2 for my passion projects. NetBeans has made great strides in the IDE space, and is becoming the choice of many application development team members. Whether you use all IBM or all Sun is moot; we have choice and competition, but not for long.

IBM’s lack of focus on marketing and developer mind share (anyone remember OS/2?) are important reasons why I hope this doesn’t happen. In a perfect world, Google would swoop in and buy them. Their cultures are very similar (many former Sun people work at Google), and the competition would still be there.
Yes, many of these technologies are open source. They will not just disapear; but without corporate backing, they will not see light of day in the corporate space. The reason Red Hat and SUSE are major Linux distributions is that Enterprises can have Service contracts. If IBM chooses to abandon them, I don't see widespread use, unless the technology is overwhelmingly compelling.

Organizations that build strong value-driven cultures frequently achieve high performance.  The values that are developed must touch every department in the organization or the overall operation will fall short of its targeted goals.

As an IT consulting firm in Cincinnati, we see many different approaches from many different companies and it is the “out-of-the-box thinkers that seem to continually apply lateral thought process on a continual basis and always stay a few steps ahead of their competition.

One would think that IT departments would observe and learn from this but way too often they do not pay attention to the business drivers of the organization and continue to stay with the same IT infrastructure year in and year out and resist change on any level.

There are those that would argue that “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” and I agree to a point but I believe that if IT professionals are going to contribute to building a strong value-driven culture that works to achieve the business goals of the organization they are going to have to look at new approaches that may enhance the very work they are held accountable for.

Being responsible for business development for our Cincinnati IT consulting firm, over the past couple of weeks I have approached several clients and potential clients with some new value propositions.  Many do not want to talk about them, nor are some even curious on what they are.  Everyone has a full plate and little capacity for a new application development services, IT training or IT consulting project.

However, here is a question that I have for these individuals.  If it is true that information technology changes every fifteen to eighteen months, how can the IT systems and enterprise IT applications that you have had in place for the last three to five years continue to be relevant or simply as efficient as they could be?  Do you not owe it to yourself to at least listen to what an IT consulting firm here in Cincinnati has to offer?  Perhaps that IT consultant has significant experience with a solution that can make a difference but you are unaware of it because you are resistant to change and everything is running 'smoothly'.  I can understand your hesitation but what if the new solution could greatly improve your IT infrastructure, decrease costs, fuel improved productivity or more effectively balance your IT staffing needs?   Wouldn’t it behoove you to at least listen?
 

You guys have nothing to worry about, we're professionals…Professional what?  I think that is a great line from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  I thought of it when I was looking at this post.   In it the author makes the point that is better to hire a IT professional sometimes rather than doing it yourself.    His rationale is that most companies are not in the application development business, so why try and internally do something that is outside your core competency.

Here are some reasons that you might want to bring in an IT Consultant.

1. Knowledge and Experience - The key advantage that an IT Consultant brings to the table is that they have a diverse amount of training and education that is expensive to hire in-house. They may also bring certifications to the table that gives them more credibility and knowledge about ways to improve your company’s use of technology.

2. Strategic Involvement - An IT Consultant could begin as a consultant for you and will investigate your current use of technology and will present you with a wide variety of options for improving your use of technology. Often, they will know more about what kind of options are out there and will have the ability to quickly identify with your business and help you choose the right solution.  Wellness Check anyone?

3. Custom Software Solutions - The ideal solution for your company will be something that is unique and works better for you than anyone else. A good IT Consultant will have the ability to either combine different software packages to best meet your needs or design and write a custom piece of software that is best for your company. In either case, they will have the ability to expertly match your processes with the software’s functionality, giving you the results that you’ve been striving for.  Open Source Solutions could work well.

4. Implementation - Unfortunately, selecting the right software is only half the battle. You must be able to implement the software and train your staff on the proper way to use the software. At STAR BASE we call this mentoring.

5. System Analysis - If you’ve already got a software package that meets your needs and are just looking for a couple of ways to manipulate your current software to improve effectiveness, an IT Consultant can help. They have a diverse knowledge and understanding of software and have the ability to work with a variety of packages, find ways to improve them, and find solutions for your company.  
 

If you're looking for a way to save some money in the tough economy, you may want to look for some help from an IT staffing firm.  Beyond typical staffing assistance, most IT staffing companies also employ IT consultants and software designers who can all combine to save you money, increase productivity, and increase your efficiency.

Believe it or not companies like mine, Star Base Inc., can do all of this.  Over and beyond placing candidates for your projects, Star Base can help improve productivity by ensuring that your company is using the right software for the right application.  If application development is not your organizations area of expertise IT staffing firms can recommend new software or write custom software that can meet your organizational needs.

Information technology staffing firms can help increase your efficiency.  My organization has developed subject expertise over the past twenty years.  We know all of the tricks and shortcuts that many people do not know.  Not only can we develop business applications and process improvement we can train users how to do tasks faster and can help identify jobs at your organization that can be handled by a computer but are not.  This usually saves companies time and investment

Finally, IT staffing companies can help reduce costs.  Yes there will be an initial investment, which is a very tough decision these days. However, in the long run they will find ways to save money and more than make up for their initial costs.  If the IT professionals can find ways to have software perform jobs currently being performed by company staff, they will free that staff up for you to use on company core competencies that can produce more goods and services while reducing payroll

When excess waste is minimized increased productivity follows. So you see, IT staffing companies offer much more than simply placing IT personnel.  They have the expertise to help cut back on wasteful activities and help you focus on activities that are efficient and designed to maximize your margins.  In a highly competitive marketplace, where all of us are stretched to do more with less, this is a competitive advantage that is worth having. 
 

I was recently about to roll off of my current project. One would think as fewer tasks are assigned to you, it would be a "breather" until your next assignment. In reality, there is much work to be done. About a week before my end date, I found out that my client extended me two more months. This was after some "interviews" with my client contact. Unfortunately, there are many application development team members out of work. Some either have not worked as technical consultants, or haven’t been technical consultants for a while. While the work itself is the same, your approach and the perception of you are completely different. Here is a list of things technical consultants should do when transitioning off a project:

• Know your end date. Many technical consultants, especially in today’s economic times, are glad to have a job. Don’t forget that this is a limited engagement. You are being judged not only on your skill, but the value you bring to the organization.
• About 45 days out, speak with your client. Tell them that there’s about 45 days left, and ask what other tasks you might tackle. You may or may not be extended, but never assume that since there is work to be done, that you will be the one doing it. Treat each term like it is going to be your last.
• If it is determined that you will not be extended, write up any outstanding tasks. Estimate what can be done in your remaining time and send it to your client.
• Make sure to update your resume, and to talk with your sales person. They often know where you are working, but they don’t know what skills you may have acquired. Any additional information will help them get you a new project.
• Some clients require a "brain transfer", but if they don’t initiate one yourself. Document how to do your tasks and schedule time with your boss and peers to determine who will be taking over. Train the staff on your job. You are not "training somebody else to do your job", you are making the organization better. When another need arises (and there is always another need), they will think of your value and ask you first.
• About a week before your end date, schedule a meeting with your client contact. Be sure to thank them for the opportunity, and try to discuss any issues with the current project. Make sure to be constructive in any criticism.
• Create a "brag" sheet of your accomplishments. This is more appropriate for longer projects. Detail all of your successful tasks, and include anything that utilizes your soft skills. Your soft skills tend to not make it in your weekly status, but smoothing over a frustrated application development member from a different team is as important as making a fix. Be sure to bullet point your accomplishments, not write the entire situation. Never, ever, embellish. I believe that a big part of my extension was my client "realizing" the value I bring.
• Don't be afraid to network with your peers. You never know where you or they might end up.

Transitioning is a difficult time, especially for first time technical consultants. If you follow these guidelines, the transition period will be smoother.

I recently heard tale of a fellow application development team member charged with coming up for a time estimate for a conversion project. The consultant had some experience with data he was converting, but had never used the converting framework. His response, "I have no idea". I don’t think that was the response his boss was looking for.

You want to be as accurate as possible, but there are times like this where confidence is low. What is an application team member to do? Time estimation is both art and science. You want to give a range of time that is possible to get your tasks completed. If you estimate 60 hours for a task and it takes 600, your client or boss will be very unhappy. They are trying to plan resources and manage projects. This ruins their plans. If you estimate 60 hours and it takes 6, you are known as padding too much, and maybe not for the best of intentions.

Here are some steps you can take to create a useful ballpark estimate:

• Break the project down into smaller tasks. Estimate each task individually
• When doing tasks that are new for you, allow time for the learning curve, but know that you will improve. If you are doing this task say 60 times, the first five may take you 20% longer. Try to average your repetitive tasks.
• If your application development depends on a GUI screen, add time to make changes. The specs and your client will likely change their mind when they see the demo.
• Always add time for testing. This is usually 20% of your time. It is always the most important part of the application development.
• When you are calculating your time, write down your justifications. These are beneficial to your boss and/or client.
• If the project has a fixed time and your estimations go over that time, do not adjust lower. Make suggestions on doing the application development in phases. It is better to estimate reasonably and be over the set time than to agree to the timetable and not achieve your goal. This is important at review time.
• If your confidence level is low make sure to note why that is. Your boss may allow more time, get you training, or just give you a pep talk
• Revisit your timetable early in your application development. A heads up on time is greatly appreciated. If you think the estimate needs to change, write the reasons for change in a document and present it to your boss and/or client.

It is scary estimating time on tasks you have never done before. But that is how we grow as professionals, and people. Don’t be afraid of the challenge. I have personally assured clients that I could get things done on new tasks, because I have confidence in myself. The tasks get done on time.

As we close another year, software application development team members are bombarded with an array of lists from the past and current year. "Year in review" articles for me are not very valuable. The events either have affected me, or they have not. I really don’t need to rank them. The "look ahead" articles have some value, but economic situations, new technical and software solutions, and user preference play such a big role, that my guess is as accurate as anyone’s. Since the coming year is ’09, the lists have nine reasons to do something instead of 10. So, in the spirit of the season, I will create my list of events that will happen to application development teams in 2009:

The Fine 09

1. Your job will be demanding. Your boss will assign you a large project with a ridiculously short time frame to complete it. You will spend long hours and complete it
2. The project you just completed will not be implemented. Those long hours turned out to be not necessary, because the phase 2 of the project has not been done by another application development team
3. You will demand training. Some of you will get some training
4. Your sales guy will be "close to closing" on many big projects
5. Your boss will be unavailable due to "meetings"
6. Bloggers and pundits will talk about "the next big thing"
7. Bloggers and pundits will downplay why the previous "next big thing" wasn’t
8. You will create something cool with your passion project
9. You will thoroughly enjoy ALL of the Java Rocker’s blog posts

Well that’s my list. Have a great 09 everyone!

Part one is here. Part two is here:

The first two parts I have discussed the bad and the ugly. Now lets talk about making it good! Usability is a pretty involved art AND science. It can be pretty subjective at times. It’s like the saying "I don’t know what makes good usability, but I know what is usable!". Here are some simple guidelines to help make your application more attractive to users:

• Consistency – I cannot stress this enough. Make sure that the order of every toolbar, button and menu item are in the same place, always. The more you deviate from this rule, the harder it is to use your application.
• Standardization – Microsoft and Google have spent millions on where to place their icons. Millions of users are familiar with their menus and buttons. Why do you think your placement is better? Follow what users already know.
• There’s more than one way to skin a cat – This old adage works fine for usability too. Not everyone uses a mouse. Make sure you use keyboard shortcuts too. And please, follow the top two rules when applying them.
• Order, please – When adding fields to a screen, order the fields by importance. The most important fields on top, optional fields on the bottom.
• Don’t assume – A big problem with many designs is that they never figure the user may change their mind. Make sure there are ways to undo the previous action. "Are you sure" messages give users a second chance to recover from a mistaken button click.
• KISS – Not the rock band, the acronym Keep It Simple, Stupid. Don’t add features for marketing’s sake. A small usable feature set is more desirable than an application with many features, but the features are hard to find or follow.
• Mr. Clean - Make sure that lesser used commands don't clutter the main screen. User inputs should be easy to understand, with enough screen real estate to enter the entire field.
• Prototype, prototype, prototype - Work on screen mockups. Let your users play with the design. Fix those issues that are common in their feedback.
• What did you say? – Use easy to understand error messages. Users don’t know and don’t care about error numbers. They just want it to work.
• Danger Will Robinson – Display all warning and error messages at one time. Color the error fields so your user knows which field is in error. A cool thing I have seen is to number the error message and field so the user can relate to the error message to the field.
• Try before you buy - Put yourself in the shoes of a first time user. Are you messages clear? Do your steps make sense? Are things displaying as you planned?

Like everything else in application software development, communication is the key to success. Your UI is your way of communing with your users on how work is to be done. The best UI designs need little training for their use. If you have to explain how something works to your users, then you need to rethink your design. You can attend usability classes (Thanks Chris), or read books like "The Essential Guide to User Interface Design: An Introduction to Gui Design Principles and Techniques" and "Envisioning Information", that can help you with your design decisions. This clearly is not an exhaustive list, just a starting point. Please contribute your guidelines to this list, and I will put them on another post.

As an Enterprise Application development team member, I deal with information all the time. The reason I am usually called in to work on a project is because communication has broken down in some area, or information wasn’t gathered. I recently went through a terrible wind storm, which knocked out power to most of the city for a couple of days. The first thing you need in an emergency situation is information. How long is the power out? How big is the outage? When those questions are answered, other questions remain. Are schools and my client open? What about my office? These seem like easy questions, but with more reliance on wireless landlines and cell phones, battery power is limited. Since this was the weekend, there is an additional difficulty getting answers.

A situation like this also gives you information. My colleagues have written in the past about the value of continuity planning. This information is true for your family. My wife and I belong to an organization that supports the city fire department. We have been trained in some aspects of first response, so we have a plan. At a minimum, have some cash, a battery powered radio, and gasoline (or a fully gassed car). After a disaster is bad time to plan, but learn from your mistakes. Use your knowledge gained from application development; review the information gathered, fix the deficiencies, and make a plan for when the next time something strikes.

How many of you have seen the TV commercial that shows a man buying an expensive painting at an auction only to turn around and want to resell it?   Most of us would never do such an investment strategy.  Most of us have some sort of investment strategy, but do you have an IT strategy? 

An IT strategy by itself is just a pipe dream or someone’s grand fantasy.  Your IT strategy must be linked to your business strategy.  So when I talk about managing IT like an investment portfolio, make sure that you IT plans are in line with the overall business plans. 

When investing most people don’t put all of their funds in to one investment.  A good investor also looks at other factors such as their own investment horizon, the economy and the world political situation.   So given those factors, one may put money into stocks, bonds and mutual funds with one being more heavily weighted than others.

One could look at an IT spending in the same way, using IT infrastructure, people and IT services in place of stocks, bonds and mutual funds.  Where will you get your best return on investment given the IT and business environment?  For example, if your business does a lot of mergers or acquisitions, investing in infrastructure might not make the most sense, because you’re acquiring assets from the other company.  You may need heavy investment in information technology consulting services to consolidate the businesses.

Another way to look at this is through a cycle approach.  Using a 3 year cycle as an example, year one may mean a heavy investment in IT infrastructure.  In year two there would be less IT infrastructure needs, so you might invest more in IT training for your application developers.  In year three, you might invest more productivity items or IT technology that could have a big strategic pay off.   As the cycle starts again, you might find yourself need to look at IT infrastructure again. 

By using the portfolio management approach, you can begin to be proactive instead of reactive.