KM that works — ASAP for Implementation roadmap updates

A quick KM win anecdote and kudos to my team.  The director who leads our methodology and enablement team drove a simple, but effective, effort to incorporate the conversation from our internal social media into our external-facing methodologies.  A new set of accelerators - samples, templates, and white papers - was published based on frequency analysis of [...]

Updated ASAP for Implementation Roadmap — WBS features

Back to business after a few less-than-serious posts….  The latest ASAP for Implementation roadmap (overview page here, NOTE: requires registration to service.sap.com) was recently updated to include consistent alignment and presentation of WBS elements.  The latest version of the roadmap is the culmination of several years of effort to harmonize the ASAP methodology’s treatment of [...]

Delivering Global Projects

Craig Borysowich’s post on special considerations for international projects (here) IDs some important factors.   Also, I have to like a guy who went for the Modigliani image (see here).  Here is his list and my comments:
Impact of Distance — The extreme distance between “home base” and the customer site can be extremely costly to the project.  Make [...]

Sentiment analysis and project debriefs/lessons learned

This post by Giles Palmer at Brandwatch (here) hits on something I’d like to try with our increasing volume of project debriefs.  We’ve done a couple of analyses of project success and trouble factors (I’ve posted on them a number of times, especially here, here, and here), but I’d like to take it to the [...]

Suddenly, SAP for Banking…

I like the title of this piece from Bank Technology News (here) on an SAP for Banking implementation just kicking off in Alberta, Canada. 
Not much to add other than to say that I’ve added four colleagues with bank or financials experience to my global team in the past 6 months and our banking hub grows apace. 
Hat [...]

Overthinking and Decision Making

Ah, the dubious pleasures of overthinking…  I recently had been reminded of my overthinking pathology by someone who has known me a while (BTW, if you’re reading this I hope you’re well and taking care); so I smiled with recognition when I read this Wall Street Journal’s article (here).
There’s a lot of grist for the ol’ [...]

Enterprise SW value, complexity, and R&D

Dennis Howlett’s extended response (here) to Vinnie Mirchandani’s post demanding more simplicity — or begging Steve Jobs to find it — in enterprise apps (here).  Dennis effectively boils down Vinnie’s argument to this:
Why is it that despite all the interest in SaaS and Enterprise 2.0 that the industry offers so very little apparent bang per [...]

Platform as a Service (PaaS) and complexity

When discussing the emerging complexity topic, we assume that initiatives will have to manage “platform<>component” relationships.  In other words, we will have to lead the construction/upgrade of a platform and lead the construction of components that plug into the platform.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) turns this assumption on its head.  Larry Dignan posts on an interview [...]

Leadership Failure in Complex Initiatives

Extending a recent theme — leading and learning in complex initiatives — I’ve just started looking at a book on The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations.  Many of the conclusions and insight reflect some earlier posts (collected here).  This post may contain my personal record for categories/tags, I guess the [...]

Simple principles = intelligent behavior

Jon at Agile Elements has a post on the “Value of Values” (here).  There’s a lot of good stuff in the post, but I’ll focus on one aspect by hijacking his quote from the founder of Visa:
Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex, intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple, [...]