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Cascade Better methods for effective delivery of IT systems in a multi-project environment. © David W. Wright Copyright © 2008 by David Wright This article is for people at companies that their IT department, a non-IT support companies have written work. In comparison, this article is not for people who work to companies is written, from Google to someone on the sale of Excel macros. The main reason is that I have not worked for an IT company, and although I have worked with many in customer-supplier relationships, I know not qualified to something that I feel no experience with writing. But IT companies also sell other IT need some help, their business can, so maybe some of my experiences with them overlap. Then, we consider the vast majority of companies making cars or serving hamburgers or investment advice or are and everything else. In this company, please fill a department / division with IT ‘professionals’: programmers, project managers, analysts, testers, implementers, operators, and loads of other specialists such as database administrators and network engineers to find. (I use a professional in quotes, because long-standing professions such as lawyers and engineers to protect the use of the word like.) The name of this group is usually developed to the ‘Information Technology Department “, or short IT (no” D “at the end); past such names as” processing “or” management information system “seems to have faded away. As an acronym, “IT” is a synonym name for the department and describe the functions to be addressed by that department. Just as we speed through the first decade of the 21st Century and the next thing is the common situation that the IT departments face? It should include: - An information systems used by companies to control and set installed report on its activities, there are always more than just a system, and possibly hundreds, many of the same work as do many others. Some may be decades old, only a few can fairly with existing and new technologies, distributed with the implementations of the rest out of the history of the department, which was acquired since the first “computing machine”, with the wide range of design and operating system technologies , this would imply. (How old along Did you read that your mainframe was dead? Did she die? Probably not.) Is still the favorite for the description of this installed base term legacy systems. - A large back-log of requested changes to this installed base of systems, overlaid with a long list of problems / bugs in the systems that the business is currently “in process” until they get tighter. - An “IT Strategy”, in glowing terms how the two cases mentioned above are by some new method or a tool or an enterprise system fixed … if the budget and resources can ever describe the adoption and amendment of the current systems, are exempt - A Senior Management Group (or Steering Committee or Review Board) that with the decision, which it is authorized and carried out work is charged: This group can be formal or informal, and can only be one person in the end, the CEO or someone he / she has delegated it, since it costs money, the CFO is a common choice. In this structure, plays the Head of IT Department (CIO, the title is called, of course) a committee secretary and / or mediator, to assist the rest of the alleged authority in its decisions IT. This is a difficult role, like the rest of the administration has a split view of IT that most of it is a waste of time and money, except for the work everyone wants for their own department / division. - Carried out a large number of current projects, which no one can remember when it started and, even if some target date has been set, no reasonable expectation exists that it will end soon. - An IT staff who remained in the same size or numbers were reduced, while more work than ever before will be charged: “Work Smart, not so hard to achieve,” “more with less.” Each person is likely to be associated with many of those current projects, juggling work and try to determine what they really do work. The overall morale and effectiveness of this staff depends heavily on the skills of their immediate management and other executives that a certain amount of inspiration when crashes do not give the morale and increases turnover. Sound familiar? Then you have the same experiences as I do, and I have written this book for you. The premise of this article is to change the situation, described above, but it is going slowly, as a rule, or worse, it can change immediately, if your department is outsourced. In the meantime, what can be done to “successfully” average in your average IT department in your company? What must be done to deliver on all these changes, and finish the current projects, so that you can begin new (it will always be new). If threatening sounds like a psychedelic poster, which means the acceptance of things that you do not change and the change of the things that you can. What can not you change now? - The installed base of legacy systems. - The backlog of change requests and bugs (even if you succeed, do deal with a lot of these things, there will be new come together to take their place, that’s job security). - Senior management “conflicting priorities for IT. What can you change (or at least begin to change?) - The structuring and management of IT projects. - Overall management of staff by skills / specialties. - Assignment of personnel to the projects. What follows in the rest of this article is my recipe for this change, supported by some war stories, experiences, and many ideas to try. Even an “average” company has some unique aspects, perhaps not everything in this book for every job, but I hope you have enough ideas that some work. My own fervent belief is that visible success in IT projects for softening / improvement of the things that you can not change now may lead. And why should you believe me? David Wright is a veteran of over 25 years in the IT trenches. He started as a programmer in the mainframe-dominated 80s, followed by 20 years, completed as a business analyst and architect, with stations in project management and testing, only limited funds. Mr. Wright has improved lately, both in the operational areas and provides new business systems issued, and in research and development with emphasis on information system of methods and instruments. The companies he has served in this capacity ranged from life insurance to delivery to Express Leasing & Equipment Financing. In these firms, he has both the operational and support functions such as Finance, Human Resources, IT administration and even systems. Sound good enough? If so, let’s get started. As we will document this? With principles. Like you, I’ve read my fair share of IT books and articles, and each author has to decide how to present the best way to try what they communicate. One way is to describe the problems / opportunities in the interest of readers, then solves the new document approach or method, the problems, the contrary is the new approach / method first document and then describe what it fixes problems. I would like to try a mixture of the two, as part of a series of. This is not an original idea, I must admit, like many manifestos and proclamations were used to introduce new ways of things, the Agile Manifesto is known (http://agilemanifesto. Org /), and I am a particular fan of the AM Business Rules Manifesto (http://www. business rules group. org / brmanifesto. htm). These and others like them were the main reasons for their existence and value of providing them. Principles can be very effective, the best thing I’ve ever seen, were a failure created by Mao Tse-tung for the new Chinese Red Army after his first revolt. His principles for long / attrition warfare summed up in “a sixteen character military leader, himself an illiterate peasant could understand … Enemy advances, we retreat. Enemy stopped, we harass. Enemy tires, we attack. Enemy retreats, pursue, we. “ Effective words, against which I compared my own not completely where hope. So what are these new IT principles that I propose? 1st There is always more work to be done than people to do it. 2nd Projects change the business, the entire business know first. 3rd Use to describe a global architecture for the company, before and after projects. Fourth Choose the right project (s) for the business. 5th Once a project is launched, bringing to an end. 6th Specialize – each member of a team assigned to do a project, what they do best for the duration of the project. 7th An architect / analyst can provide enough work for two developers and one tester, the structure of your project team to generate in this relationship. 8th It is to be invested (what counts), not the task. 9th Leave a record of what you have done, so that the project not to miss when you leave. 10th The models are better than text. 11th Partition large projects into phases of three months, the longest time to plan for you without the chance of significant change in priorities, resources, etc. 12th Within the three month period to analyze, lot of work in two-week period for two weeks to design and develop it for 2 weeks (2 developers), and then test for 2 weeks. When the first two weeks of the analysis is finished, the next two weeks to begin the analysis in parallel with the design / development, implementation of Cascading in two weeks time has been fixed until the entire project scope. 13th Since managing many medium to small software services to use, architecture and integrate the services into a complete system. I consider this a work in progress as most of the inventors of new principles and practices, I have come with a generic name to include it, for now, and how they evolve. It is: Cascade – Improved methods for the effective delivery of IT systems in a multi-project environment. © Let’s look briefly at what each principle or implied, as introductions to the other chapters, that the principles will serve treat in more detail. 1st There is always more work to be done than people to do it. Adjacent to glibness, sums up this principle of reality, virtually all organizations and activities, not just information delivery system. It implies that one group is calculated within an organization with the delivery of final results of a back-log of work not yet done so. The existence of such a back-log is not in itself a problem, it reflects the desire of an organization to solve new problems, and actively improve, the problem arises when it grows in size from sensitive management perspective, and the length of time sits at a change point on the back-log increased, so that it can be measured in the number of months or years. So, we have to accept that there will be a backwater, full of surrendered would mean that the delivery group (eg IT) is redundant, or that the entire organization is stagnant. What must be done to the back-log to embrace, it is his source material and should be treated as such. 2nd Projects change the business, the entire business know first. An endless discussion in IT circles is how much IT staff know about the companies that support the information needs. It is high lighted each will display for an IT job, previous experience in the industry of the employer says is mandatory. Is depth knowledge and experience absolutely necessary for an IT job? No Can an IT employee to be effective and no knowledge of the employer’s industry? No As in many situations like this, the “yes” is answer somewhere between the two extremes. Like a pendulum, the level of industry knowledge of this spectrum vary based on the particular organization, and by the specific IT role, eg analysts need to know more as a programmer, and it argues, correctly, that testers even more than analysts need to know. A degree of industry knowledge is required. I suggest from my own experience, however. that several weeks of research equivalent to a branch several years of professional experience, as much of a person, the experience is out-of-date due to changes in the industry provided, or is too specific to the company they were working on. Today this is truer than ever, as the ubiquitous Web allows information on just about anything possible with a text string and a few mouse clicks. As a result, they must know something about the business to go into a project and a willingness to learn more as a project progresses. The addendum to this discussion, however, is how much it costs to be specific about the way their employer conducts business, where there is competition to have known in their industry. From experience, I suggest that very little or no such knowledge would be required in a project. The cliché that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” applies here. If IT people know too much about the current business development, they can be restricted unconscious in the design of new IT solutions by “how things were done has always been here.” In extreme cases this can be an IT worker, the delusional belief that they do more about the business than the systems users and their management know. Do not fall victim to this belief. It’s about the underlying hardware and infrastructure and the IT systems that run on them. The systems’ users and their management — by all strategies, policies, procedures and rules that define and control the business support — is the specifics of their company better than knowing it depends, like their jobs. This does not mean that all business users & Management is omniscient, or that all companies operate without error or duplication, or that it is not things, the business still are not white. In fact, effective use of IT can do many of these issues in the operation of a business, but IT and IT staff in support of the business so he does not define the business. That’s how your business to support your business. 3rd Use to describe architecture, business, before and after projects. ”Architecture” used for an increasingly broad term with information technology. The number of adjectives, the term used seems endless: “Technical Architecture”, “Systems Architecture”, “Business Systems Architecture, Enterprise Architecture” and so on, so it must be important. Why do we need Architecture? Architecture is not an end in itself; architecture exists because things need to be built. Architecture is necessary when building anything that is not easy, in its nature, architecture identifies all the components of a final product and how all components are connected together and fit, include the entirety of the product. Architecture is recognized as complex and present information about the product to different audiences, from the initial / high-concept to detailed specification. Was used, a component assembly approach is the dominant sector, defined from the OO approach to software development to real-time use of services, such as popular by SOA. Specialized software agents perform together starting in the search for services and mediation between the various services to support transactions. For the average company with IT architecture is necessary because it needs it focused functionality to deliver at the highest current value, while trying hard to ensure that the work function of the integrated (“”) with the next function needed. It should be stressed that this architecture is its information system. “There are methods and approaches for a global” Business Architecture “, Architecture for the whole economy encouraged, not only IT. From him come, circles, often they look like an IT / IS architecture, which can be confusing. The architecture in this book is definitely on information technology and systems management. The good news is that you do not need to invent an IT-architecture method for your company. Many authors and vendors have already methods. When starting out, I recommend / adoption of the architecture that started everything, the “Zachman Framework” developed and improved, as examined by John Zachman. He devised a matrix framework, cross-referencing key information approaches against the level of abstraction, which are due to different target groups and participants in the delivery of the information system used. The key advantage of the framework is that it shows how concepts of information through the levels to operational components of the system information needed can be converted to produce. View the conditions on ZIFA. com The last two points to Zachman: - The cross points of the concept are called columns and rows Abstraction “Cells”, each cell will describe the group methods or documents (artifacts) to the contents of the cell. Zachman does not specify which artifacts to use or to use the methods to create the artifacts. The things that are in every cell on the chart only suggestions. Take this for 10 Principle # - The two-dimensional framework looks like, but it is actually multi-dimensional, if the artefacts are in a cell, a cross-reference to artifacts in other cells, the most obvious example is What vs How, ie, What is the function created specific events of data. Fourth Choose the right project (s) for the business. At any time, the IT department of an average company is running several projects. How did you get started? How were they even as a project to be implemented needs defined? No one can really know. In more chaotic environments, projects can start as a germ of an idea, get momentum and resources, if a manager or two could see that they benefit from the project. Eventually the project will be another bump, mostly because they both have the same IT staff or other resources. Strong leaders are too often come from these resource conflicts with what they need for their project, while the other executives are suffering from their project to keep going or has been aborted. Otherwise, the conflict has escalated to a common, higher manager must step in and decide who, what, and which is often the first time, the higher manager is also on the projects gets. I sat on a Senior Management Committee meeting, where progress was presented to a large project time and a request for an increase in the budget was completed for the project. The CEO has all this in and commented that this was very interesting, but given the spent considerable amounts of money and time so far, why the hell he had never before heard of this project? The next week my manager sent me to see the CIO, who come to me with a new process for the definition, brought the approval and control of IT projects, better known these days as “Project Governance”. So how do you want to get the “right” IT projects? First you must make the choice explicitly described the avoidance of accidental start-ups above; encourage them to propose any and every possible projects. An active strategic and operational planning will displace even more new projects such as the middle and senior management look for the IT support to their assigned goals. All these proposed project ideas are then input to a “gating” process, supported by funds from the assessment of the value of a project such as, but not limited to, cost-benefit analysis. 5th Once a project is launched, bringing to an end. Even with a good process to get the right projects to execute, there is a strong tendency, if unrecognized, to initiate too many projects at once, or to initiate more projects have been completed prior to any already in progress. This goes back to the average senior manager’s shared view that most IT spending is a waste, except for their own projects. As several executives in an organization to express these views, a natural reaction is at least one project in progress for every manager who, when most of the efforts to IT projects are only a few managers used to complain of rest or to look for other options. However, attempts to run on many projects ends up pleasing no one, as no significant project makes enough progress to be judged a success, the result is such that no one is happy the performance, even IT. Thus, projects are running, so that at least one to be completed in each period, this would be quarterly in most companies. In large IT shops with dozens of projects, it can be a percentage that you seek to be 10% to 20% of projects completed per period. Given the common situation of limited IT resources, distribution of resources on a number of projects are guided by a focus on completion, are not competing priorities. 6th Specialize – each member of a team assigned to do a project, which he can best the length of the project. This principle is supported in # 5. With limited resources, it is another strong trend to have IT staff ‘take more hats “in a project, especially the Business Analyst that will be also asked the project manager and / or Lead Tester. Instead, more than you are responsible for paying , you get less than a qualified IT Staffer in a role more time spent in the implementation of other roles as a qualified expert would be, and is from being distracted productive in their main tasks. At any time, and perhaps the more time, there are debates about what is better to be a generalist or a specialist. I agree that a strong, experienced generalists, which can cover a multitude of tasks, the best resource you may have. However, these people are rare and the odds of having even one such person in your average IT department is small. Also, make sure your employees do what they best as much as possible as often as possible. (This is not to say that people learn to not be new roles over time, either switching to different roles or candidates for the coveted generalist. However, this is the responsibility of the whole resource management, overhead, the camera is a certain proportion of a person’s productive time. That is why most methods of project management generally assume only about 6 can be used on specific projects, each of 8 hours. This reduced availability speaks more to the value of specialization at a point in time. It also speaks to the value of matrix management, project manager, where management of projects and resource managers handle the “care and feeding” of the valuable IT staff assigned to projects.) 7th An architect / analyst can provide enough work for two developers and one tester, the structure of your project team to generate in this relationship. This is actually one of those “rules of thumb” that are worn over time. (The ratio can be a bit different from case to case, as experience are at various levels over the rollers.) This ratio is combined with the specialization of the principle # 6, the strong foundation for the cascade effect in the later Principles are falling. 8th It is to be invested (what counts), not the task. The final deliverable of an IT project is the information system will be ready to actually used by these companies. If you go to “Start” this last available in a “task”, said energy to you. Some people can do this, most can not. This is again where a team of specialists is most effective on an average project. This means that the project will be distributed in many tasks, subtasks, etc.. . . Once a task assigned to it is the goal, a specialist in a stock / result / artifact that can be used by the next specialists to produce the progress of the entire project further. Unfortunately, this simple idea is the starting point for literally hundreds of methods, the delivery was, many who declare an excessive amount of content, such a task, how to make all tasks accumulate in phases to spend to do, and often that his way binding on the success. What this may lead is too much emphasis on the “how” of IT project tasks, to the detriment of actually completed this order with all speed. Here we see the task done 90% for weeks, or is that infamous “analysis paralysis” if a project does not seem to get past demand. End does not justify any means, but ends must be delivered. 9th Leave a record of what you have done, so that the project not to miss when you leave. If change is the only constant, then resources on a project will change. The risk in such a change is that a person will lose a contribution to a project, and that the new person must be assigned to the project start from scratch. This is a particular risk in “quick and dirty” projects, where operating income is produced, but no one else the code that was generated, can understand. However, if the post requires quality produce artifacts as described in # 8 above, there is always a point-in-time record of what so far achieved, which can be used by new project resources to the project with minimal interruption continue. 10th The models are better than text. I want to believe that the reasons of the time to stop this principle. It was at least a few years since I last saw a thick “SRD” or “SDD” document (system requirements document, SYSTEM DESIGN DOCUMENT). I need my offer in relation to the many talented people who produce these documents work over the decades, these documents had at least one step from requirements or design artifacts at all. Think about what is a “model” is really in general, it is a representation of a finished product in a scaled down version, engineers have to create models of what they are going to build for centuries, for reasons such as consideration of problems on a small scale and for presenting a view of the final result to whom they can pay. At this point, but let us leave every other aspect of the physical technology as an analogy for Information Systems Development. Software is different, while tools and bridges and buildings have been created, either extend or to protect the physical abilities of the people, information systems are in place to extend our intellectual capabilities to help our thinking. Given that software is still being developed, but there is another type of Engineering. Software and Information Engineering has existed as a popular concept since the 1970s, although those who call themselves’m a software engineer in the control the anger, contempt, or at least, the established engineering disciplines, and schools. I’m not an engineer, would not claim to be one, but my understanding is that traditional software engineering is now addressing within their disciplines. In the future, as software becomes even more critical to our well-being and security that it may be that those who design and build software engineers, need to be accredited, as well as those who plan and build bridges. 11th 12th 13th google.