TalkBMC - Adopting a Service (Management) Mentality - Peter Armstrong

History in the making - part 2

parmstrong — 2008-11-05T06:36+00:00

In my previous entry, I talked about the need not only to make decisions quickly, but also to be able to recognise when they are wrong, which neatly brings me to the other subject occupying all our minds at present - the global financial cockup caused, we are told, by the greed and incompetence of some of those in the banking system, and the inability of the regulatory authorities to impose any meaningful controls.

A colleague tells me that in Germany there are strict rules if you want a financial bail-out from the government - a cap on salaries, no bonuses and no dividends. Surprise, surprise, as far as I am aware, no-one has taken the money yet. "Now, let me see, a couple of billion from the government and we sort out the bank, but I get no bonus and less money each month, no don't fancy that. Let's try sorting out the problems (we caused) ourselves."

(By the way, a proper British billion is one million million, rather than the one thousand million they use in the US, so if you use our numbers the whole problem seems much smaller!!!)

Then I hear that the bosses of one major US bank are not only getting a bail-out but also their bonuses this Christmas - in fact, the amounts, which are US billions, are almost equal. Sorry, is it me, or have we lost the plot? I believe they caused the problem, so don't we have every right to demand some sensible controls on where the bail-out money is going and don't we also need to have some controls in place to make sure it never happens again?

"Hey, I don't care how you run IT and how much you spend, just come back and ask for more money next year when it's not working properly, and we'll sort you out, and salary rise? Of course, go for it. Bonuses for all the staff? Absolutely!"

Which all leads me to my latest campaign - IWOS. This stands for "Incompetent Waste of Space" and every banker getting a bonus this Christmas has to wear an IWOS T-shirt (for the rest of their lives). The sharp ones amongst you will realise the enormous marketing potential for "IWOS here" merchandise. Excuse me, I need to go and talk to my bank about a loan for a startup - oh dear, fat chance, shame.

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tags: IWOS

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History in the making - part 1

parmstrong — 2008-11-05T05:31+00:00

definition as "a chronological record of events", but it is also defined as "the events forming the subject matter of a historical account", so shut up Armstrong.

Anyway, a thrilling race, which was decided in the last few seconds, with the title going to a good-looking young black Englishman. Yes, I am referring to the Formula One Championship, won by Lewis Hamilton, which does seem to have laid the foundation for a similar event in the US yesterday! A cracking race, full of drama, which had you on the edge of your seat - the F1 championship again.

Now, I have to admire the Americans for pouring out in such numbers and supporting their candidates. I can't actually see any politician over here getting anywhere near that level of interest, unless they offered free alcohol and a discount on your next tank of petrol (gasoline, which is way more expensive here that it is in the US). But, it does all go on a bit; call me clever, but for me the result was blindingly obvious ages ago. To be honest I though Obama had blown it when he broke one of the fundamental rules of American life - don't interrupt sports coverage unless you are advertising food, beer or lingerie.

I, personally, would ban all political advertising and I'm quite keen on putting a sensible cap on campaign expenses - about $10 say. However, that is what democracy is all about. Trying to persuade the public that they are somehow involved in the running of the country.

OK, enough cynicism, what has that got to do with IT? Well, I sat there thinking what would happen if you ran IT like a democracy? Years to get to a decision, millions of wasted dollars, a system that half the people didn't want in the first place - you get my point.

Business/IT, IMHO, needs to be run as a benevolent dictatorship. We don't vote for the people in charge, but we do expect them to take decisions rapidly and get things done, and if they are true leaders they are courageous enough to admit they have made a mistake and they change it. In today's process driven world, rules have to be made and enforced - e.g. ITIL/CobIT - and management needs to make them happen, not discuss for two years what would be nice.

Many years ago I read a survey, which said that no matter how long you took over them, 50% of business decisions were right and 50% were wrong - the successful companies got on with it and corrected their mistakes. More of that in the next entry.

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Humour - at last!

parmstrong — 2008-10-15T05:17+00:00

- for those in the UK who are scratching their heads and saying that wasn't on last night, I recorded it.

As you have probably guessed it was a complete spoof on all the "talent" programmes, a bit like Spinal Tap meets the X Factor (if you've never seen Spinal Tap, then you have missed a rare treat).

What's all that got to do with the price of a fish supper I hear you cry? Well, for me all those programmes are a case of the Emperor's new clothes. Yes, every now and then, there is a real talent in there, but most of the people would be better served by being told straight up that they have less talent than my left toe-nail.

It is interesting to see the difference between the US and the UK shows as well. In the US, all the judges (except the British ones) are nauseatingly nice to the contestants, even when they (the contestants) are total rubbish. It would appear that telling someone that they couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, or that their singing coach must be tone deaf is seen as being highly impolite, with the result that the British judges are seen as being rude and arrogant. NO, that's just being honest, and we need a lot more of it, as long as it is done in a helpful way.

Constructive criticism is helpful. Destructive criticism is horrible.

Same with business services and IT.

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The credit crunch - older but wiser?

parmstrong — 2008-10-15T05:00+00:00

The youth of today (or any time) are, of course, convinced that they know everything. I, on the other hand, am now convinced that as you grow older, you either become a nerd and know lots about very little, or like me you know know less and less about more and more.

For instance, I simply do not understand:

How anyone finds Ricky Gervais funny
How anyone can like Coldplay or the Streets
How anyone finds Kate Moss attractive
How anyone ever believed a word Tony Blair said
Why they don't pay me megabucks
Why people can't use apostrophes correctly
etc. etc.

Being serious, what the current crisis has brought home for me, and I hope for lots of others, is the painful truth that you can't have everything today. Good stuff costs hard work and money, and if you haven't got enough money then you need to prioritise your requirements. Too many people, IMHO, say "I need", when they really mean "I want" or "I would like".

Same thing applies to IT. As a bedrock, I require sound business policies and a strategy that lays out the requirements and the priorities. If I don't have that, then I have a system that will collapse under pressure.

It is very easy to run things efficiently in IT - there are loads of tools for people to play with and tune stuff for hours - all of which is a total watse of time and money if they are working on the wrong thing. The first step is to be effective. Then you run what matters efficiently.

Now, could we have some effective global fiscal rules please?

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tags: Business policy | Business rules | Effective | Efficient | Strategy

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BlackBerry checkin etc.

parmstrong — 2008-10-10T07:05+00:00

Regular readers will know that I have had a love/hate affair with the BlackBerry for some time.

This was predominantly due to the crap interface and lack of features that existed on the early models. Having now used this whizzy Curve thing for several months, I must admit that they have improved a lot - it would appear they looked at what users used them for?

Calendar works now - except I can't find how to change my attendance at an appointment and let the organiser know why - GPS is very handy for me and the maps are surprisingly good. I've even used the camera to take some pictures, where the quality wasn't of importance. There is a whole raft of other icons on there, which are frankly a total waste of time, but you can ignore them.

I have installed Opera Mini as recommended by one of my readers (many thanks) and it is neat - even allows me to check in for flights and browse web-sites I couldn't navigate before.

Then, to round it all off, Lufthansa actually sent me my boarding card last week as a gif file on the BlackBerry. Being a cynical old fool, I didn't believe it would work, but hey presto I waved the BlackBerry with the picture on it at the luggage check-in lady and she swiped it with no problems - now that's a good use of technology in my opinion.

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tags: BlackBerry | User interface

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The Dark Side of the Moon

parmstrong — 2008-09-24T09:18+00:00

book - title above - which is not the history of Pink Floyd (Nick Mason wrote the best one of those), but is all about sending men to the moon.

When you read reviews for it on various websites, you will find a bunch of picky people, who have taken joy in finding inaccuracies in the book, and franlkly the author (a Professor of Modern History), should have checked his facts better. However, for me they have all missed the point, which is what did the world get for the $35 billion it cost to send people up there? I've nothing against unmanned space exploration, it's the manned part that doesn't add up for me. I heard this question asked of a NAS spokesman at a conference a few years ago, and he couldn't give a satisfactory answer either.

Now, I don't want to get into arguments here over whether it was a necessary part of the Cold War, raised American prestige/morale or whatever. The point I am making is that when you are asked to run a project, e.g. in IT, then shouldn't the first questions be why? and what's it worth? And, if you can't answer those, then the project IMHO should not go ahead.

By the way Teflon was developed in 1938, Velcro was also not a by-product, the first weather satellite was launched on April 1st, 1960, the first navigation satellite was launched twelve days later, and twelve people (including my relation) have walked on the moon, according to the book and Wikipedia.

Now, if you could just remind me what the Large Haldron Collider is going to do for me?

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tags: Apollo | Moon | Portfolio Management | Project Management | Space

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How long?!?

parmstrong — 2008-09-02T10:42+00:00

Ueli Steck, and his particular area of expertise is extreme mountain climbing - in other words, one of those people, who rushes up mountains by themselves with no ropes.

Unfortunately I couldn't understand everything he was saying at the time as my Swiss German is not too hot, but to cut a long story short he holds the world record for solo climbing the North face of the Eiger. This normally takes a day or two, but he did it in, wait for it, 2 hours 47mins 33 seconds!!!!

Now, two things struck me when I heard that:

The team record is 6 hours and 50 minutes, so the next time your boss wants to send you on one of those hideous team-building exercises, simply point him at this!
If you can climb the North face of the Eiger in less than 3 hours (and it only took him an hour to get down) why does it take so long to choose a President?

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Plain speaking

parmstrong — 2008-09-01T02:56+00:00

Unfortunately, we seem to be treating the English language the same way! My least favourite word at present is probably "incentivise" - ugly in the extreme.

Here are a few I have come across recently and my simple alternatives:

Operationalise - Do
Verbalise - Say
Transition (as a verb - yuck) - Move
Compartmentalise - Sort
Leverage - Use
Incentivise - Kick

Virtualisation is all about the most efficient use of the resuorces available - so let's get our brains and mouths working the same way!!

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tags: virtualisation | virtualization

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Published at last

parmstrong — 2008-08-31T11:31+00:00

novel is published at last.

Have gone the self-publishing route for the moment - when I have time, I will go back and try the agents again, but they all want hard-copy and dond't take elctronic input - tedious!

Now I have to start playing with all the advertising buttons and widgets they give me to see if I can get them on to facebook and other places!! The joys of social computing.

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tags: Geocaching

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Told you so!!

parmstrong — 2008-08-12T07:11+00:00

So I was extremely happy to read the results of the latest BMC mainframe survey, which has just come out, and much to my joy It actually proves my point, so no fight necessary!

So, what were the results?

The mainframe is growing, will continue to grow and is attracting new workloads - hooray!
The wall between mainframe and distributed is beginning to disappear - two thirds of the customers said that having shared tools and applications spanning across both platforms is very important - hooray!
In fact, 29% of companies now have mainframe and distributed organised together - looking at things from a customer point of view, rather than a silo point of view - hooray!
Labour costs are much lower on the mainframe - exactly!

So what are the concerns/issues going forwards? The usual suspects appear - productivity, costs, staff - but the ones that are coming up are those of energy, common processes across the different platforms and compliance. In fact, the areas cited as being most important for common processes are change management and service desk.

So, I must admit that I am gloating a tad, as I gave a presentation at Userworld on this very subject - when a silo dies, who will hear it? - and it would appear I wasn't alone in the forest - hooray! Now, please excuse me as I try to get my head through the door.

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The Novel

parmstrong — 2008-08-08T05:11+00:00

So I have been looking at self-publishing. I have printed off a couple of copies of the book using www.lulu.com - very neat and very easy. Got them back this week and it is amazing what you spot when something is printed, that you simply don't notice on the PC. Remember the talk years ago about "the paperless office" - load of rubbish. I personally can't read anything over a few paragraphs on a screen, which is why I keep my blog entries short.

Why do some websites litter their pages with links and text. Remember KISS? "Keep it Short and Simple", "Keep it Sweet and Simple", or my favourite "Keep it Simple, Stupid".

I'll let you know when the book is ready - I have proof read it (again!), corrected the layout mistakes and changed the page size / margins etc. Let's hope I've got it right this time!

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tags: KISS

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Gosh, another podcast

parmstrong — 2008-07-23T10:57+00:00

Not only do I get to bore you rigid with my blogging, I also assault your ears with my podcasts! Just recorded a new one, which deals with the way I see the skill requirements changing in IT. Talking to customers from IT and the business, I see the IT landscape shifting, with more emphasis on process and automation, a need for better business understanding at all levels etc. and that is what I talk about in the podcast and my new white paper.

Let me know if you agree. Thanks.

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tags: Business Value of IT | Business and IT alignment | Skills

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The Four Majors

parmstrong — 2008-07-23T10:22+00:00

Bear with me, I know not all of you follow golf, but this is quite simple! There are four major championships each year in golf, and being strange, they reminded me of the four major operating systems out there - z/OS, UNIX, WINDOWS and LINUX. See if you can work out which is which. I have listed them in the order they are played during the year.

The Masters - prettiest of the lot and always played on the same gorgeous golf course, which sets its own rules. In fact, you could say that it does not play well with others. Established in 1934. Seems to be open but is very tricky on the greens. Won by Trevor Immelman.
US Open - the set-up can be very tough. This year was more realistic after complaints. Established in 1895. Won by Tiger Woods hopping on one leg.
The Open - yes, that is the correct name, it is not called the British Open (that's played by the women next month). Lots of people have started calling it the wrong name, but that is basically ignorance. Established in 1860, so the oldest, the original, the most prestigious, and they even allow younger people free entry (as spectators) nowadays. Only played on links (seaside) courses. Won by Padraig Harrington at the weekend.
US PGA - established in 1916 by the PGA of America. Won by Tiger Woods last year. Only one where leading amateurs are not invited to compete - you have to be part of the (professional golfers) community.

There is talk about a possible fifth major - the Players Championship, which is played nowadays at TPC Sawgrass, with the famous 17th hole island green. This one was established in 1974 and is run by the PGA Tour. Won by Sergio Garcia this year. VMWare?

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A good recovery

parmstrong — 2008-07-22T03:29+00:00

Stayed in a hotel in Cape Town, which had an attractive looking tea tray in the bedroom, which was good news as they wanted me to get up at the crack of sparrow for the first customer meeting.

Now can you spot the obvious problem? The business service they are endeavouring to provide is that of making a cup of tea, and they have provided the tea, the milk, the tea pot, the cup, the kettle, the biscuits - but they have unfortunately forgotten the cable for the kettle!

So, no tea in the morning then - bother. I went down to check out and told them the cable was missing, so that the next guest would at least have a working solution. They asked me how long till I was being picked up - 15 minutes I said. Hey Presto, 5 minutes later a waiter appeared with a pot of tea for me. Now that was customer service.

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tags: Customer care | End-to-end monitoring

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Who chose that then?

parmstrong — 2008-07-14T06:37+00:00

I don't normally do politics here, but on the grounds that politicians really ought to be providing a service to the people, who elected them, this seems particularly apt. Enjoy.

'Good morning America , how are you? This is your favourite son, Chad Hanging, reporting.

The President of Englandland, Norman Brown, is arriving in our nation's capital this afternoon to meet with President Bush. But just who is this guy? Let's cross to our special correspondent Brit Limey.'

Hey, Chad . As you can see, I'm standing in the world-famous Trafalgar Circus, with the House of Fayed directly behind me.

So what can you tell us about Norman Brown?

Well, Chad , he has been President for some nine months now. He used to be Chancellor.

What, you mean he's, like, German?

No, that's what they call their Treasury Secretary over here.

And is he a Conservative, like President Tony Blair?

No, Chad . He's Labour. President Blair wasn't a Conservative, either. He only pretended to be.

So how did Brown get the job?

He just kept shouting at President Blair until he stood down.

But he won an election, right?

No, Chad , there wasn't an election. He did think about calling one, but decided against it because he was frightened he might lose.

How can you change Presidents without having an election? I mean, it's not like President Blair was assassinated.

That's just the way it works in Englandland. The leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Lords gets to be President.

So Norman Brown was elected leader of the Labour Party?

Negative, again, Chad . He did raise money and have a leadership campaign, but no one stood against him.

What, nobody? No primaries, no general election, nothing?

Affirmative, Chad .

Let me get this straight. His party hasn't elected him, the country hasn't elected him, yet he still gets to be President. Sounds like a tinpot Commie dictatorship to me.

You could say that, Chad . Norman Brown doesn't really like anyone being given the chance to vote on anything.

Someone must have voted for him, some time.

Oh, yes. He was elected to the House of Lords by his constituents in Scotlandland.

He's Scoddish, then?

That's a big Ten-Four, Chad.

So is he President of Scotlandland, too?

No, that's a guy called Alan Salmon.

Hang on, if Brown's from Scotlandland, how can he be President of Englandland?

That's just the way it goes in this crazy country, Chad . Brown can make laws for Englandland, but not for his own people in Scotlandland. Not that it matters much because Brown has signed away most of Englandland's lawmaking powers to unelected European bureaucrats in Brussels , Belgiumland.

That would be like stripping Congress of the power to make laws in America and handing it over to Mexico .

I guess so.

How in the Hell did the people of Englandland vote for that.

They didn't. Brown wouldn't let them, even though it was a solemn promise in his party's manifesto the last time people were allowed to vote.

Couldn't the Supreme Court have stopped him?

Not really. The Supreme Court of Englandland is now in Strasbourg , where the geese come from.

Isn't there any opposition?

There's a guy called Boris.

Sounds Russian.

I wouldn't be surprised, Chad . There are millions of Eastern Europeans living here now, mainly in Peterburl. Englandland has seen mass immigration over the past ten years, but no one voted for that, either.

What in the name of Ulysses S. Grant is going on over there, Brit? We're talking about the country which gave us Magna Carta, saw off the Armada, stood alone against Hitler and invented parliamentary democracy. How does Norman Brown get away with it? He must be a popular guy.

Far from it, Chad . According to the latest opinion polls, he's the most unpopular President ever. His approval ratings are even worse than George Dubya Bush. There's talk about him having to stand down soon. He's already promised the job to some guy who works for him - name of Balls.

Say again, Brit, you're breaking up.

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