CIOs Strategic Approach or a company without a strategy!!

One of the most challenging task a CIO (for a geographically dispersed company) faces is the standardization of processes, organizational hierarchy and aligning of business with technology. I have written and preached a lot about how IT can be an ROI house as opposed to a cost center. The need for CIOs is to understand the business perspective and be able to communicate technology business terms (doesn't this sound like a job interview objective :)???).

Its very difficult for technical guys to move astray from technology and not think of the technologically perfect solution but at the end of the day its all the more important to see how much money was lost/gained. YES..a technologically sound solution would lead to that but that is also one of the reasons why most of the technical projects move out of the scope and not deliver on time. Its not the technology that "you" like or want to see implemented, its what your customers (internal or external) want. Listen to Sales/Business/COO/CFO/CEO. Try and align Technical Goals with the Company's business goals i.e. institutionalize. At the end of the day its the company's bottom line that matters...try to make your company's positive!!!

But what if the organization doesn't have a CIO or an overall technology head??? This is a complicated one. Every location has its own technical culture - also keep in mind the target market's technological infrastructure as well as the market's technical trends. To make that work the CEO or COO needs to ensure a standardization plan or guidelines for all the location heads to follow. In any case a CIO is important if you company is technology centric.

If your technology doesn't align with the customer's technical strategy, you won't be able to sell it..

STAY ALIGNED AND FOCUSED...that is what will sell

http://www.mysoftlinks.com (Networking for software professionals)

Its true that software professionals build so much for rest of the world but they rarely make something for themselves (COZ THEY ARE BUSY MAKING STUFF FOR OTHERS!!! ;-)). Well, now that someone did think of writing for the software professionals, why not advertise it??

"SOFTLINKS" is an online networking community dedicated specifically for software professionals. It helps them grow and rest of the software industry (recruiters, HR/Hiring managers or companies) find targeted software talent. Sounds pretty cool to me...

FINALLY (SIGH!!!), someone lookin out for us....join now..http://www.mysoftlinks.com/

DBA-2 Published by Microsoft

I am grateful to Microsoft for publishing the DBA-2 framework. This is a framework that not only makes great sense technically, but it also caters for the financial management of the developement projects at enterprise level. Here is the link to MSDN: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892771.aspx

My Latest Venture...I should take a break...;-)))

Its been quite sometime since I wrote anything. After the Magic City Technology Council (http://www.bhm-tc.org), I couldn't find a place to meet Software Professional, share Software Engineering, Technology Business and Management, Career Advancement (while staying in the same job and company of course ;-)) or just get to know what other people are doing in the great big world of technology...as always I am also interested to know what other new ideas are emerging in the adventurous world of Technology Entrepreneurship. So I decided to start something online that will help all of us manage our software related contacts within our industry and even outside (if we want to) and also linkup with opportunities (since every second software professional I've met has got a business idea). So its not a people to people networking as many other websites are doing...its more of a people to opportunity linkup.

The main goal is to cut down many hard and painful steps involved in networking with someone (through an existing networking website) who you think, may have an opportunity for you (or not) and finally realizing it wasn't what you were looking for. In this genius idea (I must say ;-)) opportunities will be clearly defined and you can connect with the opportunities directly and as I wrote earlier would cut down all the painful steps of guessing and assuming....

Now, where I really had to think was the Definition of all the opportunities that people can come linkup with... I have defined some (+ more) and am looking to define as many more as I can...If you have an idea, please email me or write to me and I will add to the web tool we are building...Remember...this is again a free venture that I am taking on...JUST FOR THE SAKE OF SOFTWARE COMMUNITY...

Right now we are at yahoo groups and a very interesting and comprehensive website is being developed by a group of software programmers, including me. You can join here (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/swlinks/) for now and post opportunities or linkup with opportunities. Let me know what you think about it and how we can improve upon the idea...all professionals related to software in ANY WAY can be a past of this group...sales/HR/Tech Support/QA/Developers/Executive or C-Level Management etc...

Let me know what you thing

Want to be an Entrepreneur?

Editorial for the latest edition of Entrepreneur had some interesting quotes, thought I should add some of here - Also comment if you agree:

1. Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of you life like most people can't

2. I am not judged by number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed. And the number of time I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times In can fail and keep trying

3. If it hasn't been done, it can be done. If someone else has done it, you can do it. But - is it worth it?

4. If you are in the front of the dog sled team, the view never changes

5. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve

6. When you come to the end of the rope, tie a knot and hang on

The "Phase Out Phase"

This post is the result of a discussion I had with a Sales Executive of a software company. We were talking about the process for the software product's "Phased Out" version replacement by the latest release of that product. Many a times we think about SDLC as four phases (or sometime five phases), but we often miss out on the last phase that will help us retain customers. It is relatively easier to make a customer but really difficult to maintain them (renew licenses etc). This is delicate process where we want create the need for the new release. I am not referring to an update or a defect fix or the next minor release. I am referring to the next mass release the company is/will plan.

There are different scenarios i.e. do we want to update the existing one or do we want to replace the existing one. You may want to replace the product due to different reasons i.e. current release is not up to the technological standards for delivering a customer focused "latest" feature set, the current underlying technology for the product is not compatible with the new OS or simply because we want to move to Dot Net since our competitors are using the .Net marketing "buzzz" words!

The strategy can also be to capture bigger and wider markets (or market share). In that case we may have to create the demand first and this may very well be through the existing customer feed back or "demand" for new features. This may also be due to a shift in the market place created by the competitors. In either case the process and convincing customers can begin with business strategy alignment with the market place as well as the technical goals alignment with the business goals. The rest is dependent on the the strategic vision.

DBA2 Website

I have always been trying to figure ways out to bridge the gap between technology and the business processes. Its one thing to look at how the business process for SDLC can be improved, I am talking about how the entire business cycle for an organization can be automated using one framework. Yes, a framework for business management infrastructure "processes" automation!
This is the primary reason I worked on writing something like DBA2 (Dymanic Business Management Application Architecture" framework. Since it will be published soon and I do intend building upon this framework (of course with a team of professionals who have better brains on their shoulders than me :-)) I have decided to put together a website for the framework. The website will have the latest updates on the framework, best practices on implementing the framework and also the team members who are helping me develop this. The website is http://www.dba-2.com. The website doesn't have a whole lot on it right now but I will add details to it very soon.

I am looking for the team to now...I have Awais Shibli (Phd. student with MS in Software Engineering in Sweden), Waseem Ahmed (Project Manager at USDA) and Geoff Brantner (Marketing and Content Management). If you are interesed in joining the team read the framework and post a comment here.

Thanks,
Moiz