It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a year since the world lost one of the great business minds of the past century. Although I missed my chance to meet Michael Hammer because I couldn’t muster up the nerve to just walk over and introduce myself while we were on a break at one of his seminars in Cambridge, the man nonetheless changed my life and my way of thinking about the importance and power of process. There isn’t a day that goes by in my professional life where I don’t apply his philosophies, and I can’t help but wonder how he would have wrapped his head around cloud computing and applied it to his process management principles. I’m going to dust off The Agenda and read a few chapters in his memory. Thank you, Dr. Hammer.
Archive for the 'General' Category
02
Sep
09
Remembering Dr. Michael Hammer
Kathy Harris: Innovating the Business Case Process
Kathy addresses a tectonic shift in project planning and business case development that we are seeing with our own clients – designing systems for the long-term or even for the enterprise as a whole may be a losing proposition in an era of rapid change and innovation. Read between the lines and she is making a very strong case for Situational Applications.
Three key points:
With many emerging techniques and technologies, the pace and nature of innovation is accelerating; thus, the time horizon in which we can take advantage of the opportunity is decreasing.
In a time of rapid innovation, if we always invest for the long term, then we miss many short term improvements that can make a significant difference in productivity, cost and even the happiness of the people whose problems you solve.
Thinking back on this [enterprise-wide] approach, I believe we wound up with bigger projects, more risk, more complexity, more people, more requirements, and often, a far bigger solution than was really needed.
Gartner Blog Network: Software Needs Its Own Bauhaus Movement
This is a great little nugget from Brian Prentice. The message is simple: Form follows function. Brian’s point that, “For the end user, every additional capability beyond what serves their direct purpose is superfluous ornamentation,” is spot-on; this is why we are seeing a trend towards situational applications and applications built on platforms that enable rapid delivery of functionality without the bells and whistles, such as Force.com.
Three key points:
- …as a software solution evolves to meet as many as many users “requirements” as possible, it actually ends up obfuscating value to its constituents rather than increasing it.
- …users are clearly seeking ways to rid themselves of this ornamentation. That message is largely lost on those responsible for creating these solutions for them.
- When function follows clear purpose, form can follow function.
