Saturday, April 06, 2002

 
Posted by Mike Tarrani 3:06 PM
Notes & Miscellany. Kate's announcement regarding our documentation products we'll soon be offering represents a major step forward for TEAM Zarate-Tarrani. Offering these products has been an oft discussed goal and a source of procrastination. Kate stepped forward and the project is taking on a life of its own. Our timing may not be optimum because we are scheduled to be in Kuwait for a project, and there is a second project in the pipeline.

Web Project Support Material. I came across three interesting documents that I want to share:

1. Integrating User-Perceived Quality into Web Server Design.
2. Analyzing Factors That Influence End-to-End Web Performance.
3. Web Modeling Language (WebML): A modeling language for designing Web sites.

I haven't fully absorbed these documents, although I did a quick read. If you're involved in any type of web or portal project you may find them interesting, valuable or both.

Friday, April 05, 2002

 
Posted by Anonymous 11:36 AM
Much Ado About Much. This has been a busy week. First I became a grandmother, joining Mike and Linda in that milestone event in life where one must confront the march of time. I assure you that I'll not go gently into that role if it means growing up. Second, I've been given editorial control over a collection of documents that Mike and Linda have produced over the past two years. My task is to take policy, process and procedures, project plans and related artifacts and turn them into generic, fill-in-the-blanks templates for change control, issue management and service level management processes.

Value Proposition. The documents will be offered at an attractive price by TEAM Zarate-Tarrani. The value will be as follows:

1. Documents will be in Microsoft Word and Excel formats, and all graphics will be in Visio. We have decided that Office 97 and Visio 5 are the best formats because most companies have upgraded to those products or beyond. The value in this approach is that the documents can be easily tailored to meet an organization's specific requirements and reflect the current situation with respect to process maturity.
2. See before you buy. Samples of each of the documents will be provided, in their entirety, in Adobe PDF format. We'll lock the documents to prevent printing, selecting and copying text, or making modifications to protect our intellectual property, but potential customers can see exactly what they'll be getting before risking a penny.
3. Pricing: $49.95 is the standard price per document. We chose this price because it's a compromise between outright giving the documents away (something that we considered) and recognizing that people do not value what is freely given regardless of the intrinsic value of the artifact.

If you are interested please let us know.

More About Value and Tools. Refocusing on my technical specialities (my skills are much more than technical editing), I want to share an article about the relative value of project management and related articles that address KM tools and their real and perceived value, and the maturing and convergence of portals and KM as reported in Portal/KM Mix Gains Mind Share.

Ending Note. Although I consider myself to be a sophisticated consumer of IT services, I find myself with one foot in the IT profession, and the other foot is almost in that domain. I now find articles, such as Standards to Drive Services to be essential to my job, which indicates the increasing shades of grey that distinguish the boundaries between IT and business. Another indication is my recent reading list, which includes Know Your Enemy: Revealing the Security Tools, Tactics, and Motives of the Blackhat Community (an outstanding book that adds personality and psychological profiling to IS security), e-Data: Turning Data into Information with Data Warehousing (see Mike's 28 June 2001 and Linda's 30 June 2001 reviews), and The CRM Handbook: A Business Guide to Customer Relationship Management. I'll know into what I'm being transformed when the moon is next in its full phase. Until then I'll classify myself as a grandmother who refuses to morph into an adult.

 
Posted by Mike Tarrani 3:21 AM
Dutch - Language of Service Management? Most of our research focused on service management leads to the Netherlands, and many of the documents are in Dutch - a language that none of the members of TEAM Zarate-Tarrani read or speak.

The IT Service CMM initiative is under the aegis of the Software Engineering Research Centre (Netherlands). The other interesting initiative, the Application Services Library, a framework for application management, is also an innovation that comes from the Netherlands.

Although the entire Application Services Library web site, and most of the documents, are in Dutch, I've managed to find a few documents in English. The approach is mature, especially if you're familiar with the support hierarchy using application support analysts, business systems analysts and business systems managers. The documents are:

• Introduction to the Application Services Library: Best Practices and Framework for Application Management.
• A methodology for the Provision of Application Services.
• Application Services Management.

There is sufficient information in these documents to reverse-engineer the processes and methods that comprise the Application Services Library. I can only hope that the full suite of documents will one day be available in English.

The key point, other than sharing information and trends that we've noted, is that if you're a service level management practitioner you will do well to watch that the Dutch are doing because they appear to be doing world-class work. Learning Dutch is optional.

Thursday, April 04, 2002

 
Posted by Mike Tarrani 2:20 PM
Service Management. More background material and primary reading for anyone who is developing, implementing and/or managing a service delivery strategy. First, Introduction to IT Service Management places service management within the context of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)approach. Linda and I have both discussed the ITIL in previous entries, and we both closely follow news related to the ITIL.

Another excellent introductory resource is the May 2000 issue of the IT Service Management Journal. Although the issue is comprised of only four pages, the discussion manages to nicely frame a value proposition for service management.

Closely related to service management, and to Linda's forthcoming entries about core processes and organizational support, is a GartnerGroup presentation titled TCO — The Framework for Optimizing Business and IT Management Decisions.

Wednesday, April 03, 2002

 
Posted by Mike Tarrani 11:13 PM
A Little Help for my Friends. Linda has graciously accepted the task of continuing the description of the Tarrani-Zarate Model for core processes and organization. She has been busy working on her Oracle Certified Professional training, among other things, and will get to it when her increasingly busy schedule permits.

While she's structuring her description I'm going to contribute more background material. Please note that when she and I first developed the model it was a rough cut, and the model has evolved. We're now forced to think it through, and that takes time, thought and energy.

Background material that pertains are:

• Assessing the Organizational Impact of IT Infrastructure Capabilities. This 53-page PDF document is the findings from a survey of 236 firms regarding the he organizational impact of IT. The conclusion is that IT infrastructure capabilities have little business value. The paper goes on the claim that investments in IT infrastructure will be seriously undervalued if they are assessed only in terms of its direct link to organizational performance. IT infrastructure is of strategic importance to an organization because it either enables or inhibits IT applications and business processes.
• Organization without Accountability = Sure Failure. This single-page PDF document is an exercise for provoking thinking - I think it succeeds.
• The Role of Trust in Managing the Information Systems Enterprise. The author of this seven page paper goes to the core of organizational effectiveness. The paper is a cogent discussion of the keystone: trust and credibility.

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

 
Posted by Anonymous 10:43 AM
Legal Issues and Other Matters. I've been bouncing among knowledge management, legal issues and competitive intelligence in recent entries here and in Notes from the Field. One important topic that touches everything we do is law. In particular, the legal aspects of intellectual property. See my earlier entry today in Notes from the Field for more information and breaking news.

K8 ... Q8? Insh'Allah! That cryptic lead-in is a cute way of announcing that, God willing, I will be in Kuwait working with Mike on a project. I'm sure you immediately picked up on K8 as Kate and, maybe, Q8 as Kuwait. However, unless you're Muslim or speak Arabic you probably didn't know that Insh'Allah means God Willing. At any rate, I'm excited about the professional opportunities that this holds, as well as the personal opportunity to see a part of the world that I've only heard and read about.