The other week I stumbled across an interesting debate over at ZDNet, where they debate the state of the paperless business. I haven’t read through it yet, but I hope to chip in with my two euro cents shortly. Check out the debate here.
The problem with digitizing processes
They can be pretty difficult to change. Normally, when we digitize processes, we only touch a subset of the overall number of interrelated processes. Project constraints, such as time and resources, tend to limit our view insofar as we try to limit the scope of the development task as much as possible. However, as interrelated processes may either receive data from our process, or feed our process with data, we will inherently run the risk of breaking larger, more complex processes when we make smaller changes.
It seems to be a condition we have to deal with when running development projects. Since we cannot afford to take the entire systems/process landscape into consideration due constraints we run the risk of missing important interactions between high level processes; interactions that are pivotal to making our processes function properly in a business context.
The solution? Who knows? My suggestion would documentation. If proper documentation can be obtained, we might be able to pin point high level interactions in the planning phase, thereby mitigating the risk. It’s a pretty simple solution but for some reason it seems to be difficult to carry out in real life. BPM could actually be a really good solution to this problem. However, as one of my coworkers always says: Habet realitatem intercession.
Where are the Bing apps for my phone?
The Bing team just released what is supposed to be some kick ass apps for Windows Phone 8, but since I am in Denmark I have no access to them.
It really sucks that all the nifty Bing stuff never gets released here in little Denmark.
Update: Turns out I need to take a chil pill. The Bing apps are now available in Denmark.
Hot in Denmark today
Today we hit 30 degrees Celsius and the humidity makes it really difficult to get rid of the heat. I just might skip training today.
Look who finally got sold
Looks like my former employer finally sold the company. It’ll be interesting to see how they do with American owners and a renewed focus on EDI.
Surface Smartwatch coming?
According to The Verge, Microsoft is working on a Windows powered smartwatch, running a modified version of Windows 8. It doesn’t seem too unlikely, considering wearable tech seems to be the latest thing. It even makes sense to use the Surface brand, as Microsoft seems to be taking a page out of the Apple playbook by creating their own hardware.
I for one welcome our new hardware overlords, especially when you look at how OEMs have been producing a lot of subpar products for many years now. Hopefully the Surface brand signals a new era for us poor Windows users, how are willing to pay big bucks for really good products. Go ahead and call Apple Envy. I admit it freely. Despite their questionable business practices, Apple has created a really cool ecosystem of hardware and software, which is industry leading in more or less every way.
I wonder if we will see more traditional hardware carrying the Surface brand though. Ultrabooks and all-in-ones seem to be a natural evolution, however, as PC sales are down for the fifth consecutive month it is probably a very risky bet for Redmond. On the other hand, if we subscribe to the idea that OEMs are messing up the PC market, this might just be what the doctor ordered.
Rethinking digitization
As wrote earlier, I have been participating in quite a few digitization projects. Usually, the basic premise for the projects has been to emulate a human based process in a digital manner. Or, we have tried to make the shoe fit the foot. One of the things I have noted, is how requirements seem to be incompatible with the how a system works. In my experience, human processes are very agile and easily adaptable to any problems that may arise. As human beings, we are able to improvise very quickly in order to finish a process that has gone awry. IT systems, on the other hand, are very stringent in the manner in which tasks are handled. They can only handle tasks in a given number of ways. This, of course, presents a problem in some cases, as we will not be able to support all human processes in the system.
My suggestion is to reverse the train of thought. Instead of adapting the human process to the system, maybe we should rethink the human process for starters. I am not suggesting that we ignore user requirements at all. I am suggesting that making changes to the human process may indeed yield increased benefit from the system support, since we will be much better equipped to support our users. Most human processes have been cultivated over several years anyway, and it might actually be beneficial to have another look at them, since technology has evolved so much over the years, and maybe able to better support the users in their daily work, if their processes are changed.
What I am looking for here, is an authentic digital process. Not an adapted one. A good example of this is the Windows Phone operating system. The designers did not look to recreate “real life” on a screen, but rather designed a new digital process, which then supports given human tasks. In my opinion, it makes for a much cleaner and more effective process, which hopefully will support human tasks as well as the other scenario.
Digitization
For a couple of years now, I have been working on various digitization projects, both in the private sector and the public sector. A common characteristics has always been the pursuit of cost cutting, meaning that the basic premise for even starting the project was to lower cost associated with a given operation or process. Most of the times, a business case has been created in order to prove the actual benefit of said project.
These projects have always been ran as IT development projects, and always with a pretty tight deadline. In my experience, the deadline itself will at some point be the holy grail of the project for pretty much all the stakeholders. Anybody who has been part of a project like this knows that when the deadline approaches, we start to redefine the scope. In SCRUM we will prioritize which features we want first and which features are less important. More often than not, the result is a system that does not live up to the requirements of the business case. Or in other words, the system cannot yield the benefits that the business case assumes, thereby rendering the return on investment calculation invalid.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am fully aware that there many reasons why we change scope. There’s a resource aspect – if we prolong the project the cost of manpower is going up, if we don’t start production on a given date, we miss savings opportunities etc. My point is just that by going through this exercise we violate the principles on which the project was started in the first place. The next question would then be, are we in a better position after we have released something to production than we were to begin with? We can really only hope so. I would stipulate that the business case is doomed to fail, any which way you look at it.
I suppose it would be possible to apply an equation here that would allow us to determine whether or not to proceed with a project, if the feature benefits are out scoped. Food for thought at any rate.
Windows phone: Sync experience
I really like my Nokia 920. I really like Windows Phone 8. I really don’t like the desktop sync experience on Windows 8 though.
In the Windows Phone 7 days, I was very happy with the Zune appliction used to sync music, podcasts, pictures etc. However, Microsoft killed of the Zune with the release of Windows Phone 8, replacing it it with “Windows Phone app for desktop”. Seriously? Be that as it may, the new app syncs a little differently, making the user experience very different, and in my opinion much worse. Hopefully we will see an updated version soon (zune?) that will give us a better user experience.
Big hole in the ground
