Project Management – Keeping it Simple

June 17th, 2010 by Vince

The basic premise of project management is that work needs to get done, by a certain number of folks, in a certain amount of time, and for a certain amount of money.  To accomplish this, project managers have sophisticated tools at their disposal to organize all the work tasks, assign people to do the work, and track how long each task takes to complete.

So why with such tools at our disposal, do so many IT projects fail to meet expectations?

…Because it’s not about the tools.

The process that occurs before a project manager can even think about opening Microsoft Project (or any other project management tool) is extremely important, and quite frankly, can set the project up for success or failure from the get go, despite the sophistication of the software used to manage the project.

The process that I refer to is the one that defines the scope of work, identifies the tasks, and sets the customers expectations accordingly along the way.

An effective way to accomplish this is use a “top down” approach, meaning, once clear functional requirements are identified and agreed upon (this in of itself can be a tricky endeavor), the project team (the PM and the technical folks) can get in a room and begin to identify the work items (tasks) required to satisfy the requirements.  The key thing here is to identify the tasks granularly enough to increase the accuracy of the work estimate. 

For example, if an identified task is estimated to take 40 hours, well, what are all the things that need to be done within those 40 hours?  Can they be discretely identified, down to the subtasks that can be measured in 1 or 2 hour increments?  If yes, then break out the work plan to that level of detail.  It will significantly increase the accuracy of the estimate.

So really, it’s not about the sophistication of the tools we use to manage our IT projects, it’s really more about the basics, and gaining thorough understanding of the tasks at hand prior to inputting the data into the tools that separates project success from project failure. 

Keep it simple and stick to the basics.

Business Intelligence and the Data Warehouse

June 16th, 2010 by Chuck

For many years the concepts of Business Intelligence and The Data Warehouse were inextricably linked, and for good reason. There was a time that before you could have any meaningful business intelligence information, you first needed to gather together all of your organization’s data into the warehouse. Unfortunately, for many organizations, what started out as a business intelligence project became sidetracked into an unnecessarily large and complex data warehouse effort that lost sight of the original business intelligence objectives. Organizations became bogged down trying to identify and organize ALL of the enterprise’s information into the warehouse, rather than focusing on what was needed to satisfy the BI objectives.

In his classic book “The Seven Habits of Effective People”, Steven Covey states “begin with the end in mind”. We think this is good advice for business intelligence projects as well. Most large organizations have more data than they know what to do with. We think it’s a mistake to get bogged down into identifying and organizing all of the available data. Think about it. Is any decision maker really concerned with ALL the data? Probably not. But decision makers are concerned with getting their hands on the RIGHT data, that key information needed to make effective, business-changing decisions. So we say begin your BI project with the end in mind. Find out what key data is required by the decision makers, then set about the task of identifying and making that key information available to the decision maker.

Many organizations have extremely successful and well managed data warehouse implementations. For these organizations, the data warehouse will likely continue to serve them well into the future. For others, a new breed of business intelligence tools like QlikView are providing a different route to providing this key information. Rather than relying on disk-based data sources, these tools use an in-memory model to that by-passes the need for the data warehouse and provides the business decision maker direct access to any number of data sources. Whether this new breed of tool will replace the need for the traditional warehouse remains to be seen. Regardless of the approach, it’s critical to stay focused on helping decision makers get the key information needed and resist the pitfalls of unnecessary complexity.

Reducing IT Complexity

April 16th, 2010 by Chuck

Most businesses complain about the complexity (and resulting costs) of their Information Technology.   In this short video, Harvard Business blogger Ron Ashkenas, author of Simply Effective, taps his longtime strategic consulting experience to explain how CIOs can identify the main causes of complexity in IT organizations–and how IT leaders can overcome them.

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Features/Cutting-Out-ITs-Complexity/?kc=CIOMINUTE04162010CIOB

IT and The Business

April 5th, 2010 by Chuck

There’s been a number of engaging articles and books written about the uneasy (at best) relationship between IT and the business.  Volumes are written about “aligning” IT with the business strategy and objectives.  For years, CIOs have been fighting for the same respect and credibility as other “C-level” executives, and I’m still not sure they’ve made it.  In her Business Week article “8 Things We Hate About IT” and in her book, Susan Cramm summarizes some of the key issues that foster the hate-fest between IT and the business.  And she also points out that the hate-fest is a two-way street (turns out IT doesn’t care much for the business either).

This week’s CIO Insight newsletter features the results of a survey of IT and Business leaders on a number of key issues.  Here’s our take on a few questions from that survey.

Q: Do you think IT is overly bureaucratic and control oriented?

Business leaders: 51%; IT leaders: 37%; Difference: 14%

Our take on this one:  Wait until you see the next question…

Q: Does the business make half-baked requests and is clueless about enterprise impact?

Business leaders: 49%; IT leaders: 63%; Difference: 14%

Our take on this one:  Notice something?  On the one hand, the business thinks IT is too control oriented, on the other, IT thinks the business doesn’t understand the impact of their requests.  Both sides need to work on this one.  IT needs to demonstrate a greater willingness to respond to the business (this doesn’t mean just saying “yes” everytime).  The business needs to understand their request may indeed be more complicated than they realize and that creating good IT solutions is not easy (translated: it takes time and money).  In the end, IT needs to service the needs of the business, so we think the onus falls on IT to get better at communicating with the business (in straight talk, no techno babble) why a request may be complicated, how it can be done and what it will take to accomplish.

Q: Does IT spend money irresponsibly?

Business leaders: 16%; IT leaders: 13%; Difference: 3%

Our take on this one:  This one surprised us.  A 3% difference is negligible, but the real surprise is that 84% of business leaders feel that IT does spend money responsibly.  Good news there for IT.

Q: Do you think IT doesn’t deliver on time?

Business leaders: 44%%; IT leaders: 49%; Difference: 5%

Our take on this one:  It’s not great news when everyone feels that close to 50% of IT projects are not delivered on time.  The surprise here is that IT is actually harder on themselves than the business is on IT.  On the other hand, we understand that it’s IT under the spotlight here, but it does make us wonder how many non-IT projects are delivered on time?   Projects like strategic plans, new building construction, financial budgets, etc.  Hmmm…

Q: Do you think the business doesn’t give IT enough credit for working tirelessly behind the scenes?

Business leaders: 71%; IT leaders: 67%; Difference: 4%

Our take on this one:  If 71% of business leaders feel they do not give IT enough credit, that tells us that the business actually does recognize the hard work that IT is doing day-to-day.  The business is paying attention, keep up the good work gang!

Some final thoughts on the uneasy relationship between IT and the business.  All businesses exist to provide their customers with quality goods and services at a profit, we’ll call that the core mission.  And most businesses have a similar set of functions to accomplish that mission, including sales and marketing, manufacturing/operations, finance, HR, IT and so on.  The closer that every business function gets to supporting the core mission the more successful the business will be.  So is it totally up to IT to make that happen?  Of course not.  Whether it’s a marriage, a sports team, or the relationship between IT and the business, all successful relationships require the patience, effort and cooperation of all parties involved to make it work.

SharePoint 2010 “Super-Duper” Features

February 24th, 2010 by Tim

Within a few months (June 2010), SharePoint 2010 should be released (finally!) to the general public and the SharePoint 2010 revolution will begin.  It’s not just the business and your customers—internal and external—that will benefit from enhancements to SharePoint 2010.  With more enterprises storing more mission-critical data in SharePoint, Microsoft was compelled to bring to the table significant improvements to the administration, management, security, development, deployment, and governance of SharePoint implementations.  What Microsoft has created in the three years since the release of SharePoint 2007 is impressive.  In today’s blog, I’ll define some nifty features in SharePoint 2010 that you as an end user / end developer should take advantage and use in the 2010.

 

Access Services

Access Services lets user-generated databases in Microsoft Access become part of SharePoint for easier management by IT.  When a user creates an Access database and publishes it to SharePoint, the Access tables become SharePoint lists and the Access forms become ASP.NET pages in SharePoint.  The data stays in SharePoint, accessible via a browser and Access acts as a client for data manipulation, reporting, and viewing.

 

PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint

PowerPivot lets users work with very large volumes of data and publish their work to SharePoint for others to view and interact with by using a browser.  Workbooks published to SharePoint can be managed as you would a SQL Server Analysis Services application.  PowerPivot for SharePoint displays data via a gallery based on Microsoft SilverLight, and there’s also a dashboard for monitoring and managing the PowerPivot environment.  In addition, there’s a Web Service that ports PowerPivot data via XMLA to external applications such as Report Builder.  Together, the client add-in and server components provide an end-to-end solution that furthers business intelligence data analysis for Excel users on the workstation and on SharePoint sites.

SharePoint 2010 Object Model

SharePoint 2010 API includes some new great features which allow developers to quickly create solutions and to connect to other applications and systems.

LINQ – With LINQ we can run queries for retrieving SharePoint data.  LINQ also provides strongly typed access to data in Visual Studio offering compile time validation to help avoid runtime errors.  And the most important syntax is very similar to SQL, no more CAML.  LINQ can be used to query, in principle, any data source whatsoever, all that is necessary to make a data source accessible with LINQ is that to create a LINQ provider for the data source.  One of the coolest things is the possibility to join results from multiple lists and multiple data sources.  This is very a powerful element to use SharePoint Lists; you can almost see this as a Data Layer.

REST (Representational State Transfer) – REST help developers rapidly build applications on the SharePoint framework, having the SharePoint APIs available everywhere makes it possible to integrate to SharePoint from almost any applications including those on non-Windows platforms whether they are on the client, server or in the cloud.  Unlike SOAP, REST is not a protocol, is using HTTP to retrieve and send data and is more like a Web APIs with more direct communications.

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) – With the Business Connectivity Services it is now easier to integrate SharePoint 2010 with back end systems. The main benefits are the Read/WRITE to External Systems, Familiar UI to External Data, No-Code Connectivity to External systems, Offline Access to External Data, Governance of External Data, Discovery Via Search, Life Cycle Management.  All this makes it easy to integrate SharePoint with external systems. Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint includes these features:

  • Business Data Connectivity (BDC) service
  • BDC Connectors and the pluggable Connector Framework
  • External lists
  • External data columns
  • External data in search
  • Secure Store service
  • External Data Web Parts
  • Profile pages
  • External data in workflow
  • Rich client integration
  • SharePoint Client API

These API’s are completely new in SharePoint.  Finally there is easy way to build Rich Internet Application like Ajax and SilverLight that cans retrieve data from our SharePoint application.

SilverLight – With the SilverLight Client API we can easily develop Rich Internet Applications that integrate in our SharePoint application.  A SilverLight application can run on the browser or on the client desktop.  To create a Silverlight Application with the SharePoint Client Object Model, use Visual Studio 2010, select Silverlight Application and add a reference to these two assemblies:

  • Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight.dll
  • Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight.Runtime.dll

You can find them under the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\ClientBin folder

ECMAScript-  With the ECMAScript Client API we can easily develop Rich Internet Applications like Ajax or simple ASPX page with JavaScript that integrate in our SharePoint application.

To create an ASPX page with the SharePoint Client Object Model, add an ASPX page under the Layouts folder (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS) and register the SP.js file by adding a ScriptLink.

.NET Managed – With the .NET Managed API we can easily develop Rich Desktop Applications like Windows Presentation Foundation (WCF), Windows form application or an Add-In to Outlook that integrate with our SharePoint application. These applications can run on the client desktop.  To create Windows Application with the SharePoint Client Object Model, use Visual Studio 2010, select Windows Form Application and add a reference to these two assemblies:

  • Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
  • Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll

You can find them under the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ ISAPI folder

SharePoint 2010 Object Model includes a number of new features and functionalities for developers…now that you are aware of them…take advantage of these new capabilities!

Developer Dashboard

The developer dashboard is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 that is design to provide additional performance and tracing information that can be used to debug and troubleshoot issues with page rendering time.  With this new feature, IT pros and Developers can identify issues common and how to resolve these issues.  Developers can also use the dashboard to monitor code and diagnose bugs.  The dashboard offers a view on the bottom of each page that includes http request details, the time each request took, web server details, database queries, and more. You can set it to on, off, or on-demand.   A must have tool for any SharePoint developer!

Visual Upgrade

When you upgrade to SharePoint Foundation 2010, a new feature in the upgrade lets an admin choose among the following upgrade options:

  • Adopt the new look for all sites during upgrade
  • Let site owners decide the look after upgrade
  • Keep the old look after upgrade

If the admin decides to let the site owners make the decision after upgrade, a preview option becomes available in the site UI after the upgrade is finished.  If the site owner likes the visual upgrade, he or she can accept it.  If the site owner likes the previous look, the site can be changed to the previous Windows SharePoint Services look and feel.  What a concept…administrators will love this!

Content Organizer

When you activate Content Organizer in SharePoint 2010, this new and improved routing feature extends, enhances and makes more broadly available the routing engine used in the Records Center site template from SharePoint 2007.  It not only allows you to automatically route documents to different libraries and folders within those libraries, it can also be used for mundane housekeeping type activities such as making sure that no folder within a document library contains more than 5000 items, for example.  When item number 5001 is added to the library, the Content Organizer can automatically create a new folder and put the document in that folder.  All of this routing and folder creation can be handled automatically without further user intervention.  After a document is uploaded and the required metadata applied, the upload form displays a Url to a document that has been routed so the user knows where to find it in the future.

Conclusion

Diamond is a Microsoft Gold partner specializing in Information Worker solutions consisting of SharePoint, Exchange, OCS and Office.  Contact us today to chat about an upcoming project or pain point in your organization.  Diamond Technologies takes the uncertainty out of SharePoint and IT!

Your (32-bit) days are numbered!

February 9th, 2010 by Tim

Many of us have noticed the transition of desktop and server manufacturers from 32-bit based systems to those that run 64-bit. In fact currently you will have to do a lot of digging to find a system that is 32-bit. 32-bit based versions of operating systems such as Windows and Linux variants can run on 64-bit hardware but the opposite is not true. For a number of years the major operating system companies have been offering consumers and businesses the option of choosing either 32-bit or 64-bit versions. It appears that this trend may soon be coming to an end.

Additionally many major application releases in the past several years have been available in 64-bit versions only and require the underlying operating system to also be running 64-bit. The list of software that is available strictly in a 64-bit version is getting longer.

There are definitely PROS and CONS to the migration to 64-bit technology. The majority of the CONS are based on up front restrictions in the inability to upgrade your 32-bit operating system builds. In most cases the migration will be just that, a migration utilizing a fresh install of the 64-bit operating system. In environments where there are dozens to hundreds of servers, this will be quite time consuming and in a lot of cases impossible based on legacy applications. Many of us already support legacy applications on legacy operating systems and in a lot of the cases there’s not too much to alleviate that. There are technologies that do make this type of legacy support much easier to deal with including different virtualization solutions.

Another small CON that has lessened over time is the unavailability of 64-bit drivers for peripherals. When 64-bit systems were first being sold there were many instances where drivers simply were not available for 64-bit systems much like when a new operating system is released. This is not a significant issue these days as most peripheral manufacturers have seen the writing on the wall about the proliferation of 64-bit systems.

So, why should I bother migrating to a 64-bit version of an operating system? Well, in the case of Microsoft and likely with the Linux systems, support will eventually come to an end. Most of us have learned over the years how valuable vendor support for an operating system can be. This shows up mainly in cases of security vulnerabilities and patches. Anything we can do to mitigate our vulnerabilities is wise.

In addition to risk of ending vendor support there are some real performance advantages in running 64-bit operating systems, applications, and hardware. For most single application server builds this increase in performance will not be noticeable as the performance increase is really only witnessed on systems that are CPU or memory bound. The biggest beneficiary of the 64-bit performance boost is Virtualization Hosts. Because in most cases the goal of virtualization projects is to consolidate physical servers, the better the virtual host resources perform in the case of 64-bit systems, the more load you can put on them. This equates to a higher consolidation ratio which in turn equates to lower cost!

So, if you do have the option now, choose to install a 64-bit operating system. In the long run it will save you time and money especially when the day comes that you don’t have an option.

Mobility Management with Microsoft Exchange

January 19th, 2010 by Tony

In our last blog entry we gave an introduction into the different issues regarding mobility management.  Most company managers tend not to think about governance issues with mobile phones because it is very difficult to manage all of the different devices their organizations may have; however, your organization may have a robust mobile management package without even realizing it, Microsoft Exchange.

Microsoft first introduced integrated mobile messaging support in Exchange Server 2003. This provided Exchange customers with a low-cost, easy-to-manage mobile messaging solution as part of their Exchange deployments. Microsoft has continued this pattern with the subsequent releases of Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and Exchange 2007.

Advantages of Exchange Mobility

There are four key advantages to the implementation of mobile messaging in the Exchange Server product family:

  • Exchange mobility reduces costs. Support for mobile messaging is included as part of the server. There is no additional cost for this functionality. No additional server software is required, and users who are already licensed to use Exchange don’t need additional client licenses. Mobility management is integrated with the same familiar user, server, and system management tools that administrators already know how to use, so training and management costs are minimized.
  • Exchange mobility is highly scalable. Microsoft has carefully tuned Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange 2007 to provide industry-leading scalability. This tuning extends to the Exchange ActiveSync implementation, which provides efficient communications between client and server. Unlike other mobile messaging servers which rapidly require the addition of more servers (both third-party mobile servers and core messaging servers) as the mobile user base expands, Exchange uses the same servers for mobility as well as OWA and Outlook Anywhere.
  • Exchange mobility supports many different devices. Microsoft provides client support for Exchange ActiveSync in its own Windows Mobile operating system, and has licensed the Exchange ActiveSync protocol to other device and software manufacturers, including DataViz, Nokia, Palm, Apple , Google, and Symbian. This provides your company an even broader choice of device styles, types, sizes, and capabilities.
  • Exchange mobility provides policy and security enforcement. The Exchange ActiveSync protocol includes tools for policy and security management, including remote device wipe, password strength and age restrictions, and password-based device locking and lockout. The EAS protocol delivers policies to the device, where device-based software can enforce and control them.

Direct Push

The versions of EAS supported in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and Exchange 2007 use a significantly different technology called Direct Push to synchronize with mobile devices. Direct Push uses a client-created HTTPS connection to the server. The mobile device creates a connection and keeps it open for a duration known as the heartbeat interval, sending an initial synchronization request when the connection is opened. The server can then take several synchronization actions.  The great thing is that the mobile device is not constantly checking the server for items; the server only pushes items to the device when they are available.  This keeps the device battery from running down.

Device Security Policy

Exchange Server  has the capability to create security policies that are delivered to the client device through Exchange ActiveSync. The device implements the policy and takes action when it receives the policy information from the server. Different devices have differing levels of support for EAS policies, which can specify several aspects of device security:

  • Whether or not a device must be locked with a personal identification number (PIN).
  • The minimum length of the PIN.
  • Whether the PIN can be numeric-only or alphanumeric.
  • Whether failed PIN entry attempts should trigger a local device wipe.
  • How often policy settings are reapplied to the device.
  • Whether data must be encrypted or not.

Local and Remote Device Wipe

When a mobile device is lost or stolen, the potential risk can be significant. Mobile devices often contain sensitive business data, including personally identifiable information of employees and customers, sensitive e-mail messages, and other items whose compromise can have a negative impact. Exchange ActiveSync addresses this risk by providing two levels of device wipe capability.

Local device wipes are triggered when a user incorrectly enters a PIN more than a specified number of times (the policy default is 8 times, but the administrator can adjust this value). After each two missed attempts, the device displays a confirmation prompt that requires the user to type a confirmation string (usually “A1B2C3”). This prevents the device from being wiped by accidental key presses. Once the PIN retry limit is reached, the device immediately wipes itself, erasing all local data.

Remote wipes occur when the administrator issues an explicit wipe command through the Exchange Mobile Admin tool; in Exchange 2007, users can also issue wipe commands for their own devices from within Outlook Web Access. Remote wipe operations are separate from local wipes, and a device can be wiped remotely even if EAS policies are in use. The device user doesn’t have the ability to opt out of the remote wipe. Wiping the device remotely has the effect of performing a factory or “hard” reset; all programs, data, and user-specific settings are removed from the device.

Conclusion

Mobile devices offer a powerful way for people to be more productive and flexible in how they work. Microsoft Exchange Server provides powerful, built-in mobile messaging capability that includes security policy management, device lockout and wipe, and full synchronization for calendar, contact, task, and e-mail data. With a broad array of licensees who support the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, your organization can find the right form factor and capability of mobile device for their needs, all supported by the mature, reliable Exchange Server product line.

Shrinking the server’s footprint, not power

December 28th, 2009 by Chuck

Virtualization technologies can help your business shrink the footprint and costs associated with your IT operations. Diamond Technologies was recently featured in a News Journal article highlighting the benefits of Virtualization technologies. Full article here.

Alternative IT

December 1st, 2009 by Chuck

In an October, 2009 report from Information Week entitled “Alternative IT: Software’s New Reality” the author describes how CIOs today are more willing than ever to explore and accept alternative models for providing IT solutions to their organizations. While many organizations will continue with the traditional model of software delivery (licensed software running on in-house servers supported by in-house IT staff), alternative IT solutions are gaining greater acceptance, even in large enterprises. They go by many names, “software as a service”, “cloud computing”, and outsourcing in many different flavors, but one thing all of these alternatives strategies have in common is that the systems are moving out of the in-house IT shop in one way or another.

Even Microsoft, who has made its fortune selling software to run on its customers’ computers, is changing its tune and is planning to offer Microsoft Office, one of the most widely installed software programs in the industry, as an online application. We predict there will come a tipping point of sorts in the acceptance of new computing models. Consider salesforce.com. When we first heard of the salesforce.com model our thinking was “this will never work, sales organizations will never let this precious data off-site”. Wrong. Salesforce.com is a juggernaut in the CRM world with hundreds of very large clients. We think the same type of shift will happen in many more application areas as CIOs see others take the leap and become more comfortable with alternative IT models.

Mobility Management Introduction

November 17th, 2009 by Tony

Before we even begin, let’s start with this as fact; email IS corporate sensitive information.  Not buying it?  What if you were visiting a perspective client who you knew was also looking at your competition.  A person working at the client happens to be a friend of one of the competitors (or is getting paid).  You set your mobile device down and this person swipes it.  You would probably think you lost it.  Would you feel comfortable with your competitor looking at your emails or your calendar?  What if it was one of your employees who loses a phone at a bar?

That’s just email.  What if you have applications with mobile databases on the device?  Financial statements?  Company documents?  The list goes on and on.  It is easy to see how sensitive that device becomes and the increasing need to manage it.  With that in mind, we lead into mobility management.

As far as I am concerned, mobility management – if you look at it holistically – includes:

  • Requirements assessment
  • Business and IT policy creation
  • Device procurement…which ties into
  • Device provisioning…which ties into
  • Device management…which ties into
  • (Custom) Application development…which ties into
  • Application management
  • Service management
  • Security management
  • Expense management
  • End-user support
  • Help Desk / Remote Access
  • Device replacement
  • Data back up

This sounds like a lot, and it is.  Depending on the size of your company and the nature of the data, some of these items are unnecessary.  The point is that handing an unmanaged phone to an employee and allowing them to access corporate data is not very secure.  You would not allow that kind of access with a PC.

Let’s revisit our scenario from above.  Did you know, if your company uses a Microsoft Exchange Server for email, that you can wipe out all of the data on your device from your Outlook Web Access system?  This is device management.  Did you know that you can require a PIN to be entered whenever you phone “wakes up” so only you could look into the phone?  This is security management.

We have only touched the surface.  In future blogs, we will explore these items individually and judge the impact each has on your business.  At the end of the day, companies need to find a balance in terms of how they support devices.  They have to make a decision around what extent they will cover and support the devices and service.  There’s no right answer and there’s no wrong answer (except having no answer at all).