A Neverending Stream of Hilarity

At least for me.

I can count on one hand how many sites on the internet have left me reduced to hysterical tears and shuddering, mouth-breathing gasps simply because they were that funny. Granted, I have a very strange sense of humor, some colleagues might even call me strange period, but still: I think I know funny when I see it. And today I will show you something very funny, and even if you doubt me on account of my self-admitted strangeness, this is my blog post and I’m sitting here making the clackety noise with my keyboard, so you might just want to go along for the ride. Trust me.

Just to give you a baseline, I find most things that people flit about email not very funny. I’m the boring jerk who’d rather be taken off joke email lists because, well, they’re not funny and I, again, am a jerk that way. I’m much more apt to start email flame wars with my colleagues for their sheer entertainment value than forward around links and jokes.

Also I am a word nerd. I like writing. I like reading.

I also like the completely absurd. I have often thought about writing a few Friday blog posts about serious topics with totally false, absurd, downright wrong information, but then I realized John Hodgman has a corner on that market. I was so angry about blowing that opportunity, but that’s another story.

So, take a weird sense of humor, word nerdiness, and an affinity for the downright absurd and you’ll see why I love so very much the Pronunciation Manual YouTube channel, (thanks to Jason Kotte for the link), which simply shows you how to pronounce oft-mispronounced words. The catch: the pronunciations are flat-out wrong, ridiculous and hilarious.

Here are some of my favorites, but you can go over to the channel to watch them all. I could link to them all day, but I’ll spare you and show only the best here:

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

In part one we identified some of the main reasons large PeopleSoft projects fail.  Now let’s discuss how we mitigate these risks and implement for our clients successfully.

Risk: The solution is not tied to the business objectives.

• As outlined in previous blogs, one of the first activities we conduct is the BluePrint Workshop. The workshop identifies all of the project objectives, classifies them as strategic or tactical, prioritizes all of the objectives, identifies how we are able to measure each objective (after all, if you can’t measure it, it is challenging to determine if it was met).  Finally we attach project success criteria to the objectives.  These objectives are a part of the project charter which is expected to be signed off by the executive sponsor.

Risk: Scope is not managed.

• Every project has a well defined scope change management plan with appropriate escalations and approvals.  Preferable is the approach that any change to scope once the fit/gap is completed requires a change order whether it is the smallest seemingly insignificant change or a very large change.  All changes have must be approved by project management and executive sponsorship to be fully approved for the project.

Risk: Organization is not prepared for change.

•  A full time organizational change management lead who is experienced with preparing organizations for change associated with PeopleSoft engagements should be deployed on the project.  Organizational change preparedness is so much more than simply communication in that is requires its own discipline, expertise and dedicated skillsets.

Risk: Project team skills are not appropriate and unavailable.

• During the BluePrint Workshop we identify the required resources required from both the client and MIPRO.  For each client resource we identify the very specific role and responsibilities along with the percentage of time they are required for the project.  This information again becomes part of the project charter.  Additionally, as outlined in the charter, these are the resources required to achieve the objectives of the project and be on time and on budget.  We conduct a sanity check of resources against project objectives.  We expect the executive sponsor to support the project and ensure the identified resources are available for the anticipated timeframe.

Risk: Executive Sponsorship is not strong and not visible.

• The role of the executive sponsor begins immediately with the BluePrint Workshop where the executive sponsor outlines why the project is important to the organization and identified corporate level objectives (that we then tie to the project objectives).  The executive sponsor signs off on the project charter along with his/her expected role.  We put the executive sponsor into the change process, issue escalation process and organizational change process.

Risk: The system is not sustainable by the client.

• Knowledge transfer is the cornerstone of our SD3 implementation methodology.  Not only do we staff with the best and brightest, but we align resources directly to the appropriate client counterparts.  Our design allows for the MIPRO team to understand the client business and for the client to understand PeopleSoft.  By the end of the project we expect our clients to know as much as we do about PeopleSoft so they can sustain the system.  Additionally we ensure shortcuts are not taken on testing and training.  This is achieved if we plan appropriately upfront and execute well.

Risk: End users are not trained

• There are multiple factors used to ensure end user training.  The first is a training strategy developed up front, early in the project.  We also recommend a training lead to develop and lead the training efforts. UPK is a very valuable tool to help ensure end users are trained.  We time end user training to coincide as close to go live as possible.  As noted prior, with the proper planning we do not find ourselves in situations where the timeline is crunched and the project is looking for ways to cut corners (which usually results in training being reduced).  Having the right staffing, dedication to training and planning allows us to ensure end users are trained appropriately.

When titling this post, I reminded myself of the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”  Actually, what we strive for at MIPRO are uninteresting implementations and upgrades.  So, that said, before beginning a project, one should always review the following:

MURPHY’S LAWS OF COMPUTING

1. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.
2. To err is human… to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human; in fact it is downright natural.
3. He who laughs last probably made a back-up.
4. If at first you don’t succeed, blame your computer.
5. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.
6. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.
7. A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want it to do.
8. When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
9. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it’s probably obsolete.
10. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.
11. When the going gets tough, upgrade.
12. When you need to send an email quick, that’s when the modem wireless router won’t connect!

So, how does one avoid as many of these real – though humorous – problems and maximize success?  One word:  planning.  Throughout the rest of this post, you will see numerous examples of platitudes, conventional wisdom, and corny advice – all of it real and all of it worth emphasizing.

So, plan your work and work your plan.  Sound reasonable?  You’d be surprised how many projects fall into the ready, fire, aim category.  In fact, if you don’t have time to do it right, how are you going to find time to do it over?

Projects should be planned.  In fact, the planning phase of a project should consume 10-15% of the total cost and effort of the entire project.  I’m sure your momma once told you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Or, as the Cheshire Cat told Alice, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

So plan already.  In fact, if you plan well enough, you can probably find someone else to do the work (just kidding!).  But, laying out the plan well, and then measuring how your project conforms to the plan, is the surest method to ensure success.  In fact, if you are serious about planning and measuring, this is one time that no good deed goes unpunished will probably not come to fruition.

For those of us with some engineering background, remembering the 2^nd law of thermodynamics is always critical:  increasing entropy, or while the quantity of something may remain the same, the quality of it deteriorates gradually over time.

Projects are like this, in spades.

Without a good plan (and good measurements against that plan), and serious scope control, projects tend to drift, slow down, get more expensive, take too long, and generally offend the sensitivities of the very stakeholders who are paying for – and should be receiving the benefits of – the project.  In fact, most projects end up living up to this maxim:  all’s well that ends.

So, if we know that everyone’s enthusiasm will wane (definitely a 2^nd law truism) and management will become impatient (you know that the frequency and severity of system crashes are in direct proportion to the importance of the audience), being able to demonstrate and document where the project is (and where it will be in X days) will mitigate against our bosses saying about our project, ‘After all is said and done, a heck of a lot more was said than done.’

It’s interesting that in my legal world, we are ethically bound when taking a case that we must (a) be knowledgeable about the subject matter, or (b) study up to become knowledgeable fast enough not to prejudice our client, or (c) associate in some other lawyer who is knowledgeable.

How does this apply to our enterprise IT projects?

Well, how often does your organization actually do a project like this?  If it’s an upgrade, when was the last time you successfully performed the upgrade on your own?  If it’s a new system – financials, human resources, payroll, maintenance management, etc. – when was the last time you successfully implemented a complex software system that affected all or a large portion of your organization?  Are you knowledgeable enough about the subject matter?  Can you do the project with OJT fast enough?  Or will you require assistance from someone who is knowledgeable?

It first comes down to planning:  what you want to do, when you want to do it, what resources it will take, how long will it take, and, last but certainly not least, how much will it cost.  For sure, unless you have both the plan and the expertise to work that plan, you should re-read the Murphy’s Laws at the beginning of this post.  Remember, if there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.  And the corollary adds the word “first” to the end of the sentence.

In conclusion, plan, measure, plan, measure, and make sure you took plenty of time to plan.  I planned for this article to run two pages as I draft it here in Word.  Ahh, I can change the font size to ensure that it’s two pages:  if I declare “success” loud enough, my project is a success!  With proper preparation, YOUR project can also be a success.  Remember, Murphy was an optimist….

Questions, comments or feedback about this? Don’t be afraid to email me.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Unabashedly Waxing Poetic on Apple From a User’s Standpoint

I started using Macs when they were powered by the Motorola 68000′s and Berkeley Breathed anthropomorphized one in Bloom County. Even back then, in the miasma of the awakening WinTel juggernaut and whiffs of Amigas and Atari STs, Macs were considered niche machines. I wrote my first dozen short stories on that little Mac, and after upgrading to a Mac SE/30 I went through high school with that little beige box on my desk. The Mac, and the Commodore 64 that preceded it, were my first technology proving grounds.

Later, because I was a hopeless gaming nerd, I migrated to Windows PCs for a stint. I built my own rigs. I spec’ed my own motherboards, hard drives, RAM chips, cases, power supply and garish-colored fans. When GPUs were invented, I pored over every polygon each had the potential to push. I had become a full-on hardware nerd.

My stay on the Windows side of thing lasted longer than I expected, because that happened to be the same time Steve Jobs was exiled from Apple and John Sculley began his seemingly-intentional grounding of the company into any rocky shore he could find. The Windows PC era was in full bloom, and nobody outside really dedicated typesetting/design studios ever thought about Macs again. Everyone thought Apple had been relegated into insignificance; Michael Dell even suggested that Apple should sell the stock back to shareholders and ‘shut the company down’.

In the early 2000′s, as real life became more real and I wasn’t spending my nights fragging strangers in Rocket Arena 3, I was looking for a more elegant computing setup. My giant, power-sucking, room-heating beast of  PC was too much, Windows was too boring, and I longed for something new. As it turned out for me, everything old indeed does become new again.

I did something that made everyone laugh at me: I bought an overpriced, shiny, white MacBook. That was back in OSX 10.1 days, when the OS was unquestionably immature and limited to the point of being annoying. It was also during the very beginning of Apple’s real resurgence, a movement that saw the iPod give way to the iPhone, and the introduction of what many argue is the new modern-day portable computer: the iPad. It also heralded a bona fide Mac explosion.

Today, I’m Apple everywhere, for better or worse. I have an iMac, MacBook Air, iPhone 4S, iPad and Apple TV. Everything just works. My days of fiddling with Windows and building my own machines have given way to technology that enables me to do what I want, easily, effortlessly. I  know it’s bad form to gush uncontrollably about a tech bias in public, but Apple has done something amazing with itself over the past 12 years, and I’m proud to say I’ve been along for (most of) the ride, through the doldrums as well as the ascent. To me, and from the perspective of the user, Apple is a brave company, one that stands for higher standards and holds a focus on user experience that is in its DNA, as opposed to watery marketing fodder.

A few days ago, Apple announced a historic quarterly earnings report. Even by the hyperspazzy standards of Wall Street analyst wonks everywhere, Apple absolutely showed that it is winning pretty much every battle its fighting. Scratch that — it’s not just winning, it’s dominating.

Apple announced sales of $46 billion. Think about that. Here’s a $100-billion-plus company growing at a 73% clip, which simply isn’t supposed to happen. Sales in Apple’s past quarter exceeded its entire 2009. And this year, we’re looking at the iPad 3, the iPhone 5, probably an Apple TV reincarnation, and who knows what else. What’s for sure is that this momentum shows no signs of slowing.

Some other interesting trivia in light of Apple’s performance:

Data shows that shows PC shipments waning — except at Apple.

Farhad Manjoo puts things in perspective for anyone who can’t get their head around what Apple just announced: Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion).

At Verizon, 55% of all phone sales for 4Q 2011 came from iPhones. That means two iPhone models (the 4 and 4s) outsold every Android device the carrier offers combined.

Finally, here’s the ultimate framework in which to look at Apple’s data: it just posted the second-most-profitable quarter in any company’s history.

Where’s Charlie Sheen when you need him? Oh, he’s right here.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

OVERVIEW

PeopleSoft Forms and Approval Builder is part of Common Components 9.1, therefore available for use throughout all of the PeopleSoft HCM and FMS modules.  It allows a business analyst or other non-developer PeopleSoft application expert to create simple forms and establish an approval for the content.

HOW-TO

Begin with creating the form using the Design Form Wizard.

Navigation:  Main Menu > Enterprise Components > Forms > Design a Form

1. Basic Information – enter information about the form, including effective date and a description.
2. Instructions – enter instructions that will be available for users accessing the form.
3. Form Fields – enter the fields that will be available for users accessing the form.  Fields of a variety of data types are displayed in one or two columns.  You can enter a short and long label, indicate if a field is required, designate a prompt record, and define a prompt control for the field against an existing field and record.
4. Attachments – indicate if any attachments should be made available to users accessing the form, for example a policy or template document.
5. Publish to a Menu – designate where the form should be accessed on the PeopleSoft menu.
6. Approval Process – designate the chain of approval the form should go through, if needed, and if the fields on the form should be locked down after submission, approval, or not at all.

After creating the form, it can be previewed in design mode, prior to activation onto the PeopleSoft menu.  Activate the form to make it available to users on the menu as designated.

When a user accesses a form, three tabs are available.

1. Form
2. Instructions – displays the instructions entered during form creation.
3. Attachments – provides access to any attachments assigned during form creation and allows the user to upload a form as well.

As an added bonus, you can connect data collected on a form to one or more component interfaces in an effort to eliminate redundant data entry.  (Example:  new vendor request form can feed into adding a vendor.)

Note, this feature intended only for the creation of new records through a simple single page front end, not maintaining them.

I hope you have found this introduction to Forms Builder helpful.  I believe this is a powerful, yet simple feature you can leverage to either remove custom pages or automate currently manual processes to stretch your PeopleSoft investment even further. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’m always happy to chat.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Prior to jumping into the world of PeopleSoft consulting, I spent many years implementing accounting solutions, as well as conducting instructor-led training for those applications.  In my years, I had some great classes, and I had some that just plain left me scratching my head.  Was it me?  Probably not: nobody except the lead developer knew the software better than me.  Was it my delivery?  I didn’t think so: I resonated with people and their survey forms said so.  Was it the material?  Okay, maybe….sometimes accounting software doesn’t compare with the world news, or the latest celebrity gossip.

It took me a while to recognize characteristics of the adult learner and how the dynamics of the people in class impacted the whole class.  I can’t remember who shared this with me, but my world became crystal clear when I recognized the three types of learners – explorers, vacationers, and prisoners.

Explorers are there because there is a world waiting for them and they want to know about it.  They hang on every word looking for opportunity to be better, do better, or just make things better.

Vacationers are there because they just want to get out of their day job.  It is an interesting break from the mundane.  Needless to say, their heart is not always invested in what you are trying to say or do.

The last group is the prisoners.  These are people who are forced to be there.  Imagine their reaction when their boss said “I need you to attend this training”.   It should come as no surprise when you catch these people doing everything except what you want them to do.

I share this with you because I am often perplexed about the amount of time spent in today’s world in meetings, conference calls, planning sessions, etc.  The next time you have to run a meeting, maybe you should do a quick inventory of who is in the room and what category they fit into.  Chances are pretty good that the prisoners won’t volunteer (or accept responsibility) for anything, much less grab an idea and run with it, and the vacationers will agree to anything as long as it does not create more work for them.

As a consulting company, we work with many organizations implementing new software.  That often means adopting new systems, implementing new business processes, and challenging the client to see things in a new and different way.  Of the three types of people I have described above, who do you think tends to perform well in these scenarios?  And more importantly, how many of these people are on your project right now?  If the answer is “not enough,” you may have just found who is killing your project.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

I heard a radio ad a few days ago that has been bugging me, so I’m going to riff on it here. Sorry, no links or cat stories this week.

In the radio spot, the voiceover guy says in closing, “We do what’s right for the customer, not what’s right for the company.”

The second I heard that I bristled. I thought, what a myopic approach not only to running a business, but also communicating with your customers.

What bugs me is the notion that these two ideas are separate, living in two different ideological silos, one completely unaware of the other. Silo one says, “Let’s do what’s best for the customer, screw the company.” Silo two says the opposite: “Let’s take care of the company, but nevermind the customer.”

Look at Apple, Amazon, Zappos: do we not have enough modern-day examples of how the radio ad’s thinking is totally wrong?

Let’s put our Steve Jobs hats on for a second: if you take care of your customers — build a great product,  provide a great service, create relationships and not just transactions — the company’s going to be just fine. Actually, way more than fine. It will thrive.

This idea is something that you hear a lot of companies espouse, but dig a bit deeper and it’s not always put into practice. Why? Gotta watch out for the company. Someone in some meeting realizes that taking care of the customer means looking at your products or services and maybe totally revamping them, because they’re not the best for the customer. And when that happens, the idea gets resistance and often dies on the vine. It gets relegated to a nice marketing tagline at best.

To us, it’s always been this: you watch out for your customers and clients, and the rest will come. There are the normal constraints of reason, of course — a smart company isn’t going to satisfy irrational, opportunistic customers — but for most cases, there’s little need to think that taking care of the customer and the business are different things.

I can’t tell you how many times we have told clients that they don’t need implement module X, or they really don’t need custom interface Y, or that idea Z would wind up stressing their internal teams despite netting us a nice engagement contract. Each time, the customer has come back to thank us for shooting straight with them, even when the money/deal/project was ours for the taking.

It’s about doing the right thing, all the time, without exception. The money we have lost by walking away from those projects has come back to us threefold when our customers refer us to other opportunities with colleagues or partners. Every time, it’s, “You guys shot me straight, and I was blown away by that. I want to introduce you to a colleague of mine who has a big PeopleSoft project in the hopper but is sick of being burned by other consulting companies.”

You take care of your customers, and you take care of the business. Same time, same thing. No difference.

As for me personally, I’d be wary of any company whose advertising talks of it being an either/or proposition. It’s crazy enough to think it, but it’s another level of crazy altogether to articulate it.

Anyway, there’s my riff. Have a great weekend, everyone.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

A Clear And Present Danger

How often does it happen that an organization moves from an old legacy ERP type system to a new, up-to-date ERP system and it fails to meet expectations and to improve system and business process efficiency?

Too often!

One of the primary reasons is that the project is way underfunded for the scope and somehow management has decided that there is no need for the costs to be what other successful companies have spent and they set forth to “do it on the cheap.”  Major strategic projects, such as a new ERP implementation or major ERP upgrade, which are underfunded, under staffed, and given an unrealistic time frame to complete, almost never work out.

Cutting corners and saving money on such strategic projects, which are a foundation for the company to support how they manage the business,  may not be the best idea.  The ROI is to be realized after a powerful system is implemented successfully and everyone’s expectations are met.  Doing it right means:

• More cost upfront on the project, but also a maximized ROI for the long term, as in 10 to 15 years, every year.
• Significantly higher system performance and business process efficiency realized, every year.
• Smooth transition from the old to the new system.
• Easier Business User buy-in and happier end users from the get-go.
• Much less maintenance and support costs, every year.
• Minimizing the need for customizations and making future upgrades easier and cheaper.

Given that most organizations do have to deal with finite budget limits on such projects, the best strategy is to plan what scope you can do, within the limits, while “doing it right.”

A Best Practice would be not to take or introduce unnecessary risks, which seldom work out.  Most often one cannot do all of the scope that one would like to do in Phase 1 due to the budget and time available.  What you can do to is develop a long-term, phased-in roadmap, based on business priorities, where the key stakeholders will be able to see when their needs will be taken care of.  OK, they may not get the new system functionality this year, but they will be happier to see that it is at least on the list to be done next year, or the year after.

With new technology, it is often said that “You don’t know what you don’t know.”  If you choose to do it on the cheap, you are most likely going to find out what you don’t know the hard way — and sooner, rather than later. What you may save on the front end, you will likely pay the piper for many years to come.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Say what you want about Cuban, but I love his no-BS approach. Here are his 12 rules for startups, and it’s hard to argue with any of them. He comes out of the gate with two I find to be the cornerstone of every successful business:

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.

Read the whole thing over at Entrepreneur.com.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

2012…what’s in store for you this year?

If Santa didn’t leave you an upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.1 under your tree, nor PeopleTools 8.52 in your stocking Christmas morning, you may need to take control of the situation yourself.  Whether you are losing support for your current PeopleSoft applications or you finally have managed to set aside some of your hard-earned budget, this could be the year you pursue making your PeopleSoft applications work even harder for you, and Oracle has provided more than 200 additional features through 9.1, PeopleTools 8.52, and the subsequent feature packs.

A couple of highlights:

Forms and Approval Builder.  This new feature is part of Common Components 9.1, therefore available for use throughout all of the PeopleSoft HCM and FMS modules.  It provides a business analyst or other non-developer PeopleSoft application expert to create simple forms and establish an approval for the content.

Enhanced Search Capability.  PeopleSoft 9.1 allows users to perform global searches across multiple indexes and return the results organized by dynamic facets (segments), then take action based on search results, without having to navigate the menu to do so.  Additionally, the Last Search Results link allows a user to return to the results of a recent search and perform additional actions or to access additional results.  Keyword Search allows for a global search across multiple components throughout the PeopleSoft application, and can be used to review more than the 300 record restriction applied to traditional field based searches.

Manager Dashboard.  This feature provides an at-a-glance view of important information to help managers know where they need to focus.  PeopleSoft Administrators designate which pages are available for managers and a user can further personalize the content details and layout.  Highlights of the Manager Dashboard include:

• Alerts and Approvals pagelets indicate what transactions need immediate attention and navigate directly to the transactions through the pagelets.
• The Direct Line Reports pagelet categorizes data for each employee across a variety areas of interest, including Job Details and Compensation, then drilldown as needed into the application for details.
• Pivot Grids enable you to easily analyze, filter, and slice relevant organizational data, including switching between various chart types for more productive analysis.
• Quick Links.  This feature provides easy access to frequently used items without having to navigate the application to access them.

Credit and Collections Workbench.  The new workbench in PeopleSoft 9.1 Receivables provides a one stop shop where receivables users can review action items, analyze customer information, and work to improve their collections-related efficiency by utilizing risk-based scoring.

Approval Framework.  The new Approval Framework, formerly referred to as the Approval Workflow Engine, is available throughout the Financials, Supply Chain, and Human Capital Management applications.  Notification Emails provide links directly into the transactions requiring approval, and approvers have the ability to push transactions back a previous approver, as well as add ad hoc reviewers and approvers as needed.  You can use the Approval Framework as delivered for existing approvals or to build additional approvals needed to support your business needs.

You can find out more about PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 applications by logging in to My Oracle Support at support.oracle.com.  For a conversation about mapping out your PeopleSoft applications strategy and roadmap for 2012 and beyond, don’t be afraid to contact us.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.