Blueprint? RDS don’t need no stinkin’ Blueprint

Strong SAP SDN post by Mark Chaffen on SAP RDS (Rapid Deployment Solutions) and the case of the missing Blueprint.   I’ve only started to dig in to the topic, so these are my (likely half-baked) first thoughts: On balance “no Blueprint” is good.  Its exclusion reinforces that a RDS implementation is of a fixed, limited scope.  There must always be [...]

Wow, Leo Apotheker’s gone already?

Unbelievable that Leo Apotheker has already fallen on his sword.  There has been tons of chatter about Leo and his demise (Dennis Howlett here, Larry Dignan here, Michael Krigsman here, and the #leogone Twitter feed is here).  Here are a few of my thoughts and questions: Everyone at must be relieved that Hasso is back in [...]

Why I left SAP…”macro” negatives

Second-guessing oneself is a risk when deciding to leave a leading company, so I needed to ensure that I had no regrets when I left SAP.   In particular,  I didn’t want short-term personal or “micro” stumbling blocks to obscure great “macro” opportunities in the rest of SAP.  Unfortunately, there were too many big picture concerns that nagged at [...]

About one-to-many EMEA SAPPHIREs

There has been some hubbub (Dennis Howlett collects some comments here, Josh Greenbaum more positively here, SearchSAP story here) about SAP’s decision to move from a single SAPPHIRE event in EMEA (2008 was in Berlin) to a series of events around the continents.  From my experience working around the world — and based on no ”inside SAP” knowledge whatsoever [...]

SOA and Project Management

We’ve discussed the impact of enterprise services and Enterprise SOA on a number of occasions (in many of the links collected here and here especially).  My focus has been on complexity and how Enterprise SOA is part of the transition where “every project becomes a program”. One of the little discussed impacts — on project managers, [...]

Project debriefs…the Army way

Nice post on after-action reviews (AARs, or what we call reviews or debriefs) by Ed Kless at VeraSage.  Ed relates the experience of an United States Army officer in his class (post here).  I especially liked two points: At AARs all personnel remove their hats. This signifies that in the AAR there is no rank. [...]

Video from pics at animoto.com

Here’s a cool Web 2.0 site — animoto.com — that let’s you create a video from jpg, gif, etc. It took me about 30 minutes to pull together a few family pics, select some canned music (I could have uploaded an mp3), and voila! Curious what folks think…

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 [...]