How does your company handle major change?

Although many large technology initiatives fail because an inadequate or inefficient change management framework, many companies still lack a consistent approach in supporting their employees and external stakeholders through major system implementations and other significant business initiatives.

 

 

There are many reasons for this.

• The roles and responsibilities for communication, training, and monitoring performance remain vague.
• The approach varies from department to department.
• Information is pushed out once in the wrong format (usually by email) and not made available on a portal under version control. We see this often in companies that have an immature or outdated collaboration style.

We’ve put together a short poll on change management approaches. Please take a moment to tell us how your organization handles major change, and share your thoughts in the comments.

It’s the End of the World As We Know It!

The Holidays are a great for watching “End of the World” shows on the History Channel. They were a great comfort, actually almost encouraging, because all of the prophecies target 2012.  “The Bible Code II”, “The Mayan Prophecies”, and the Big 2012 Special compendium of End of the World scenarios, covering Nostrodamus to obscure German prophets, all agree that 2012 is the big one (Dec 21 to be exact!)  What a relief!, the rest of the news reports are trending to canned goods, shotguns, and gold by the end of the year.  We really have almost a whole 48 months before everything goes bang (I wasn’t ready anyway, procrastination rules!).

Unfortunately, we need to do some IT planning and budgeting for the new year and probably should have some thoughts going out 36 months (after that see the first paragraph).  As I discussed in a prior blog, the reporting, BI/CPM/EPM, and analytics efforts are the strongest priority; followed by rational short cost savings efforts.  All organizations must see where they are heading and keep as much water bailed out of the corporate boat as possible.  Easy call, job done! 

Then again a horrifying thought occurred to me, what if one of these initiatives should fail? (see my nightmares in prior blog posts on Data and Analytics).  I am not saying I’m the Mad Hatter and the CEO is the Red Queen, but my head is feeling a bit loosely attached at the moment.  Management cannot afford a failed project in this environment and neither can the CIO in any company (remember CIO=Career Is Over).

The best way to ensure sucessful project delivery (and guarantee my ringside lawn chair and six-pack at Armageddon in 2012) lies in building on best practice and solid technical architecture.  For example, the most effective architecture is to use a layer of indirection between the CPM application (like Planning & Budgeting) and the source data systems (ERP, Custom transactional).  This layer of indirection would be for data staging, allowing transfer to and from fixed layouts for simplified initial installation and maintenance.  In addition, this staging area would be used for data cleansing and rationalization operations to prevent polluting CPM cubes with uncontrolled errors and changes.  In terms of best practice, libraries and tools should be used in all circumstances to encapsulate knowlege rather than custom procedures or manual operations.  Another best practice is to get procedural control of the Excel and Access jungle of wild and wooley data which stands ready to crash any implementation and cause failure and embarassment to the IT staff (and former CIO).  When systems fail, it is usually a failure of confidence in the validity or timeliness of the information whether presented by dashboard or simple report.

CPM, EPM, and Analytics comprise and convey incredibly refined information and decisions of significant consequence are being made within organizations to restructure and invest based on this information.  The information and decisions are only as good as the underlying data going into them.  So skimping on the proper implementation can put the CIO’s paycheck at serious risk (Ouch!).

IBM Anounces Certification in Cloud Computing .. Huh?

IBM first announced a competency center in Cloud Computing, then a Certification over the past couple of weeks.  Well, I guess the old Druid Priests of Mainframes should recognize the resurrection of their old God TimeSharing.  Here we are, back and rested from the Breast of Gaia, Greener than Green (Drum Roll Please…….): Cloud Computing!  (Cloud Computing quickly adjusts his costume makeover to hide Ye Olde TimeSharing’s wrinkled roots)  Yes! here I am fresh, new, exciting, Web 2.0, Chrome Ready!  With me are the only guys (Big Smile from IBM!) who can Certify and Consult in My Mysteries…. IBM!

The more things change the more they stay the same, but this pushes the Great Hype Engine to a new high (or low..ha ha ha).  I can understand IBM wanting to jump on the Cloud Computing bandwagon, but are we really ready for a certification?  No one is really sure what is in the Cloud, or how it operates, but IBM is ready to lock it and load it.  Yep, they are Certifiable! (ha ha ha!).  While one can admire the desire to define and take a stand on Cloud Computing; this is one topic that requires a bit more “cook time” before full scale avarice takes hold.

Cloud Computing to too “cloudy” and “amorphous” to define today.  While expertise and advice is required, there needs to be more independent vetting and best-of-breed component level competitions.  Full solution demo platforms need to be put together to elicit ideas and act as pilots.  Case studies need to spring from these efforts as well as early adopters before an organization bets the farm on a Cloud solution.  The existing ERP platforms did not come into being overnight and these solutions have an element of their interdepency and complexity (Rome was not built in a day!).  All of the elements of backup, disaster recoverability, auditability, service level assurance, and security need to be in place before there can be a total buy in to the platform.  The reputation of Cloud Computing does hang in the balance, all that is required is one high visibility failure to set things back for potentially years (especially given the current macro environment).

Above all at this stage, a certain level of independence is required for evaluation and construction of possible solutions.  Evolution mandates independent competition (Nature Red of Tooth and Claw, Cage Fighting, Yes!).  Maturity brings vendor ecosystems and the all consuming Application Stack, but not yet.  More innovation is required, we may not even have heard of the start-up who could win this game.