Plato apparently said “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers”. Having worked with successful balanced scorecards, KPI dashboards, measurement programmes with functional size measurement at its core, ISO/IEC 15504 capability level assessment baselining, one would expect that I would oppose Plato’s statement, in support of this issue’s theme.

However, I admit some disillusionment in the world of numbers. In addition to the successes I’ve experienced at my previous companies, I love to hear successful measurement stories of improvements to organisation success, productivity and frameworks. I even love to hear about the excellent quest to support practical application growing with users and not stagnating.

What has caused disillusionment is that "measures" can be less than ideal.

• Measures are emotion-free snapshots:

How do we manage Nations with the marginal political victories in recent elections in Australia, US or any number of AGMs? Are they just a snapshot of the confidence we have in our elected leaders? How do we manage in the face of these akward figures? How do we get the national/organisational culture to move on and work to achieve its organisation’s goals)? Would your measurement framework cope with something equivalent to the recent Wikileaks challenge? Is it simply taking a lateral view on establishing a multi-dimensional framework to cover all governance areas? Or are such challenges just "noise" to be removed from the measures in order to keep reporting simple for your management? 

• Measures are qualitative, as well as quantitative.

Consider an individual's KPIs for, say "integrity" that one could never over-achieve on as a measure! Tenders have been awarded based on measurement-driven weighted spreadsheets with well-defined criteria, as well as relationships and trust ("priceless"). We recently worked with a customer to measure their capability to implement two solution options based on past process performance. The associated risks (qualitative) with each option, as well as the capability levels achieved in the past, provided a valuable indication of potential future performance.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said “Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.” Looking at maturity models and measurement, we can rephrase this as: measurement maturity is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite. As management matures from art to science, managers distil the infinite mountains of world-wide information to the most critical finite measures, making more reasoned decisions that are based on measures, but also guided by our experience and intuition.

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Coming from the IT world of 1’s and 0’s, technologists can sometimes see things in black and white, and struggle to reconcile both views. Certainly customer value is a variable which obviously depends upon the customer - their needs but also their maturity in knowing what is appropriate for their situation.
Wikipedia explains that “in Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin (ying, for those less versed in the Chinese language) and yang is used to describe how polar, seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn.”

In the movie What Women Want, Mel Gibson’s character begins to understand his intended ‘customer’, when he gets into their minds. In the movie, the secret seemed to be in the ability to read minds. Spending 15 years in IT, there are times I wished we had such a Star Trek Vulcan-like tool to better understand what our customers REALLY wanted. In this issue of the Alinement Magazine, we get into the minds of our IT customers, hearing from experience in the domains of measurement, security, improvement and Gen Y!

From the CIO's viewpoint, balancing technology with business value is impossible if business decisions are delegated to the CIO by virtue of them being technology-enabled investments. While they may appreciate the opportunity to implement a new ERP or upgrade a customer management system, well-governed IT needs business owners to fully appreciate the investment rationale, prior to them taking ownership and implementing the technology-enabled portion.

From a customer viewpoint, IT is often accused of delivering solutions they didn’t want. Technologists should not assume that a solution that does not meet all their criteria of completeness or correctness is not of value for that particular customer. Technologists should not feel the need to unnecessarily upgrade something that meets the customer’s wants and needs. Just because some businesses seek to adopt leading edge technology to stay competitive does not mean that it is a driver for every customer. Technologists should allow and encourage customers to make that decision themselves (see Rocky’s article about responding to Gen Y, Tony’s article about responding to security users, Pam’s article about responding to agility, Alain’s article about responding to improvement).

That being said, I am a strong advocate of standards. As you read Alain’s article, you will understand that this also revolves around value! So, what are the unwavering needs of technologists? The articles we have brought together in this issue offer us some great insight into customer drivers, as well as what technologists need to explain or do, to synthesise apparent contradictions. Customers and technologists are not yin and yang, but can create harmony if they go about it in the right way! Would customers be frightened off if we predict what they want in a Twilight Zone-like ‘What You Need’ giving them what they want before they ask for it? Imagine a world where technologists respond to customers in the way they need, but still being unwavering in what they reasonably need.. Hang on – that’s the promise of the latest hype. Maybe we shouldn’t be looking for Silver Bullets that fix the problem, but rather walking a mile in the other person’s shoes!

Tell us more about your experiences with speed, security awareness, process improvement and dealing with different aged customers – and whether you identify with Gen Y, Gen X or Baby Boomer!

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Business processes represent an opportunity for dialogue about collaboration, re-engineering and automation, within, and even outside, enterprise borders. The new issue of Alinement Magazine encompasses various aspects of processes: their models, their architectures and the required leadership, that allows the capture of the core business interactions of an organization.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is right: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” Similarly, neither a business nor its myriad stakeholders remains the same for long and processes capture this dynamic aspect of business.

While most discussion of business processes (Six-Sigma, for example) focuses on customer interactions, modeling an organization’s internal processes can be as important as its external processes. The services offered by the IT department are a case in point, with Service Management frameworks like ITIL bringing them to business visibility, ensuring they can no longer be circumvented by the rest of the organization. Proper evaluation of these services is essential in order to show the value that IT can bring to the organization (as shown in Rahul Mohod's article). The need for IT departments to measure, and sell, their services and capabilities becomes clear when they have to compete for survival in times of mergers and acquisitions, or stave off the threat of outsourcing.

Even as we struggle to address the full implications, businesses have become heavily reliant upon software and IT. In this context, the Business Motivational Model (BMM – see Mark Walsh’s article) provides a valuable resource for organization's looking to transition to a process-based enterprise. The close relationship between processes and IT suggests that business process is not far removed from a software process. The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) or, alternatively UML’s use cases and activity graphs, can be used to model a series of increasingly complex business processes that might then be enabled by IT. Excellence in process modeling not only serves to document the end-user interactions and aid in their optimization, it can also help to identify business priorities for IT automation, helping separate business needs from wants.

The value of an enterprise-level process architecture arises from the insights it can provide executive management and the promise of “creative and frictionless action”. Business intelligence (BI) embraces this concept by incrementally sifting through data, processes and corporate knowledge to create a dynamic matrix that brings together otherwise unrelated (or siloed) information. As argued by Tiwary, BI can also expand its horizons to include collaborative intelligence that takes the concept of BI beyond one organization. The key to future business success is to see beyond simply competition, and use the concepts and technologies of business intelligence to achieve collaborative intelligence.

These different facets of business process show why it is a driving force for innovation in the enterprise. And as we continue to use IT to enable, support and automate the execution of these processes, efficient business processing becomes a reality.

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Tough business times are not new. What is new is the rapidity with which economic difficulties can appear on the horizon and engulf our businesses. Alvin Toffler, a few decades ago, predicted that not only are we inundated with change, but also the rate of change is increasing. Therefore, the need to base our business on a robust suite of fundamentals that would help it sustain through tough times is essential.

Furthermore, synergy between the myriad elements that make up the organization – typically the leadership, the analysts who understand, model and optimize the operations, and the business as well as information technology (IT) strategies of the organization, amongst others – is another crucial element of a organization that, if engendered correctly, can help it weather storms such as the current Global Financial Crises.

The latest issue of the Alinement Magazine is squarely focused on these fundamental aspects of business. This issue develops the idea of close cooperation between business and technology in a extremely practical way. The three authors  who have contributed to this issue, are highly respected, experienced and pragmatic professionals covering the business and IT domain. All have indepth understanding of both the business and technology aspects of organizations and have been practicing as well as advising organizations on their business and IT strategies.  

Firstly, Keith Sherringham, a highly experienced IT consultant with a flair for writing, discusses seven business fundamentals for tough economic times. While stressing that these are not necessarily new, Keith presents them succinctly and reminds us of the need to adhere to them especially when the going is rough. Keith also discusses the reasons why and how these fundamentals work in practice. 

Dale Nott then takes us into the interesting area of business sustainability and agility – as against pure software agility. Dale’s wide ranging experience together with his BPM work at Cinergi, comes to the fore in this article. To start with, Dale describes the business rules, process controls and metrics that make up BPM. This is followed by a succinct description of the challenges in implementing BPM and practical discussion on how to handle those challenges. 

Finally, Satish Chandar takes a plunge in the field of authoring by outlining his vision of business analysis in sync with both business and IT strategies. Based on his wide-ranging experience, Satish takes us through the activities of a BA that can add direct value to business and IT strategies – such as clarifications and demystification, engaging with the organizational leadership and stakeholders and keeping the context of the IT strategies firmly in mind. Appropriate risks associated with this approach and how to ameliorate them are suitably highlighted. 

This is a must read issue for all of us who are keen to learn from the experience reports of peers and who would like to bring about positive changes within our organizations that would enable them to survive and prosper in our turbulent economic times.

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The Alinement Network is marking a major milestone with Bhuvan Unhelkar of MethodScience coming on board as the editor of the Alinement Magazine. In agreeing to edit at least three issues of the magazine, we can look forward to Bhuvan’s exceptional grasp of the current issues effecting business and IT. Bhuvan is also a contributor to the Alinement Magazine with a thoughtful article on the pros and cons of UML modelling that can be found here.

Bhuvan has chosen the following themes for upcoming issues:
•         Business Essentials in Turbulent Times
•         Process Analysis
•         Change Management
 
If you would like to contribute an article or commentary on the above themes, or generally provide some thoughts, please feel free to comment below, or simply e-mail us: editors at alinement dot net.

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Once more unto the breech dear friends .....

Yes, this site was hacked ... even as we were getting it ready for the next step it was brought down ignominiously. To its knees! Virtually a restart!

Showing that even such a modest enterprise as an on-line magazine is worthy of .... I'm embarassed to say ..... good backups.

Ah well, as a friend said - now you will know if you really want to do it. Create a worthwhile community site that tackles some of the real management issues practitioners face in attempting to get businesses run effective? I'm a sucker ... I'm in! Maybe even renewed. Nothing like a challenge ... in Shakespeare's words:

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man, As modest, stillness, and humility, But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard – favour’d rage, Then lend the eye a terrible aspect, Let pry through the portage of the head, Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it .... Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide; Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height!

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It all started with a desire to disseminate my PhD research.

I don't think it's really too much to ask that after nine years of research. At this point my thesis has a readership of more than a handful of academics - three of whom were my examiners - and my mother and sisters who at least flipped the pages respectfully.

Anyway, blogging seemed to be the way to get the message out in a digestable form for practitioners .... after all, that was the audience I was always targeting. Being in the IT industry for over 20 years, it did not seem worth doing research simply on theoretical abstractions. I wanted to solve real world problems - and think I have!

The problem with blogging though is that it is just soooo solo .... and being a shy guy, I felt uncomfortable simply being one voice, pumping out this stuff I had already been working on in relative isolation for years. A dialog would be nice .... some feedback with other voices and views on "managing the enterprise" - expecially as the agenda was so broad.

So the idea of a community site was born .... with a selection of feature articles forming a magazine that was supplemented with practitioner blogs, of which I would be but one.

This all seems very self-less I know .... but I held the ultimate hope that this community would actually be an exciting and stimulating web destination that could attract a wider following that I myself could ever command.

Not so self-less .... but an online collaboration of like-minded individuals ? I liked that idea!

And it is crazy and challenging enough that it is at least worth a try - don't you think?

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When the Alinement Magazine becomes the go-to site for the management community it will be interesting to see how it all started ...... and if it dies in the gutter with the whole world of netizens oblivious to our lofty aims ..... then this becomes a cautionary tale of wild hubris.

Either way - it should make for fun reading ..... for my grandkids, if no one else!

With that, I hereby start blogging the "backstory" to the Alinement Network community site ..... warts and all.

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