Monthly Archives: February 2010

How the presentation was?

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Today I have assisted to a typical lesson learned that you can read in thousand books.

The agenda of the meeting was the presentation of 2 technical solutions for a given business process.

The workbench meetings with the client when the solutions were being worked given us some information about what was the preferences of the different stakeholders with respect the 2 alternatives.

One of them was properly worked but the other was a little bit favourite.

Today, when both solutions were presented, the initially favourite solution was presented by a horrible speaker, without a good speech, with lack of information and reading directly the slides.

The second one was presented by a speaker who maintained the attention of the listeners since the first second till the end, getting interaction with them, provoking questions with his slides that got the attention of the people and making these 20 minutes a very good investment for the listeners. He finished with a good summary of the concepts he wanted remark and that’s all.

Now the stakeholders who didn’t work with the solution in deep have an opposite opinion to the ones who were working with the solutions.

Consequence: the decision making process will take more time. Bad goods for me…

End user resistance to change, real life? or just a joke

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You are working in big application project, some months studying requirements, some others planning and developing them after the proofs of concept with identified and approved key users.

Then, you develop the solution during some other months and finally end-user acceptance test is approved by your customer.
You refine the last details of the migration to the new application and the different stages of the transition to the new application.

You deploy it, and suddenly there are some problems with the end users adoption. They don’t like the application, why?

  • “…The training sessions offered did not cover the 100% of the features of the application… but they are the same business processes you were managing within the old application… yes, but I really feel that I would need more explanations…”
  • “…there were some features of the old application that I enjoyed a lot and it helped me in my daily duties. They have disappeared… why nobody consulted me?”
  • “… where is the ‘xxxx’ field of the form?, this process is not right and I do not feel comfortable using this wrong process…”
  • “… I don’t understand why the other people need to see this information; in the old application the restrictions were different…”
  • “… Who decided these colours? …”
  • “… With the web application I cannot copy and paste…”

These comments are from the same people who once that facebook, twitter or whatever web portal was created they:

  • Learned to use the tool without a formal course,
  • Updated all their photos: weeding, children, friends, family…
  • Entered all their personal information in several questionnaires,
  • Didn’t complaint about the colours / shapes… they are funny!

I don’t know if this is the natural behaviour of some people to changes in their job or there is another reason, but the resistance to change to the “new” applications exist.

I’m exaggerating a lot, but imagine that it happens to you….

Guess who?

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You are in a new position in a new client, you need to know who is the people who take product decisions, who are the project stoppers, which other stakeholders you need to take into account in order to obtain middleware approvals for virtual environments deployments, how much time you need to tell to capacity management that something is going to be deployed….

Funny toy to play in the adult life,

FEL-Phase of a project

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Today I have learned a new term of something I know since long time:

Front-End Loading (FEL) of a project,

it’s the process by which a project team translates its marketing and technological opportunities into capital projects. In other words, during this FEL phase, the questions of Why, What, When, How, Where and Who are answered.

The FEL phase is important in defining a capital project.

Till here there are not so many differences between the FEL phase and a Project Initiation phase or the process of development of the project definition document.

Continue reading, the FEL phase of a project performs a complete life cycle cost analysis, taking into account:

  • the costs of operation,
  • cost of maintenance,
  • and the cost of replacement or release.

So this process allows you analyze the life cycle cost (LCC) of the required investment.

Application Portfolio Manager

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Main responsibilities:

  • Provide a single point of accountability for the delivery of all application services to the client.
  • Identify, create, and execute opportunities for account expansion.
  • Identify and develop business solutions that address the business objectives of the client through proposals.
  • Ensure the application portfolio financial targets are achieved.
  • Provide leadership and builds team spirit for those who support the client in delivery of application services.
  • Ensure that client relationship and satisfaction are maintained.
  • Understand client’s existing IT environment, IT trends, best practices, and alliances/partnerships.

This year seems to be another funny year,