Putting ERP to Work in Higher Ed

Team Building with LEGO Towers: Part 1

2012-01-09T07:30:00.000-05:00

Introduction
The opening premise was that I needed a hands-on activity for my semi-annual staff meeting. Such activities are not my bailiwick; hand me clay and ask me to make a vessel for my feelings and I'll make a crude ash tray, surpassed easily by almost anything coming from the hands of a toddler. So I embarked on an epic quest to find a tactile team-building exercise that I wouldn't hate myself for thrusting upon my team. "There must be something with LEGO," I thought, and commenced Googling... Thankfully salvation came from a fellow by the name of Nick Heap.

It had everything I wanted: team work, project management, ROI, and LEGO. Naturally, I created a PowerPoint deck to guide the morning.

Guidelines
The rules:

Build LEGO tower with positive Return on Investment (ROI)
Tower must be able to stand freely for 1 minute
20 minutes maximum time from starting horn
No other materials can be used in the construction
Two phases: Planning and Construction (important cost implications below)
You can manipulate bricks (sort, count) during Planning, but Construction begins the moment two bricks are joined together
Each team will report its strategies and lessons learned during the post-build debrief

How to calculate ROI:

As demonstrated above, Revenue is driven strictly by the height of the tower (in centimeters). The complexity comes with the expenses (doesn't it always?). Materials are priced at a straight $0.50 per brick, whether it's a 1x1 stud or a 2x8 brick. Labor costs differ during the Planning vs. Construction phases -- which makes the honesty of the time-keeper much more crucial!

The Raw Materials

What should your shopping list be? I must admit that I spent 30 minutes at the LEGO Store in Burlington, Mass., puzzling over this challenge. Knowing I would have four teams, the decision to buy four green plates was easy. At first glance, the obvious answer seemed to be LEGO 6177, the "Basic Blocks Deluxe". You might think that in a kit like this the distribution of pieces by color would be roughly equivalent. Nope. Not even close. In this kit, the yellow, red, blue, and white bricks have nearly equal distributions -- except for the 1x6 and larger. The lime green, green, black, orange, and brown bricks are many fewer but almost align (but not quite -- for some odd reason the brown have four fewer 2x2s; the black and green have 3 additional 1x2; the lime and orange have 5 extra 1x1...) If you are truly concerned about absolute parity across the competing teams, you'll have to do a fair amount of counting and sorting. Ultimately, my shopping list was:

3 LEGO 6177 (650 pieces each)
4 gallon-sized ZipLoc bags (for the yellow, red, blue, white)
5 quart-sized ZipLoc bags (for the other colors)
4 32x32 green base plates

We only used the yellow, red, white, and blue bricks, although I also crafted a trophy for the winning team by adapting this pattern. Total cost, roughly $115. But with revenue (measured in fun) nearing infinity, I feel pretty good about the return on investment!

Will be back soon with Part 2 -- results and lessons learned.

2012: A Preview + Resolutions

2012-01-04T07:19:00.001-05:00

All signs point toward a crazy/incredible year.

At work we remain on track to complete upgrades to PeopleSoft 9.1 HCM in April and E-Business Suite 12.1 Financials in November. We are plumbing the depths of the new functionality in Oracle EPM 11.1.2 for planning and budgeting (in production since mid-November, but with a host of unknowns). Later this week I am supposed to gain admin privileges on an OBIEE 11g sandbox—there are only a thousand things I want to do with that shiny new toy. We have active projects in research admin, student financials, treasury, and more. And that’s only the stuff we know about; new requests are coming in so fast and furious that in the calm before the holidays I built a new application using Intuit QuickBase (starting from one of their many great template apps) to manage intake and prioritization; I expect to deploy it to my leadership team this week. And on Monday I will be putting QlikView 10 in action to analyze time-tracking and productions support metrics from last quarter. Yessir, it should be an exciting year.

My 2011 was a crowded with professional development and networking activities, in addition to the normal daily grind. I attended five national conferences (presenting at four of them) across the spectrum of higher education and IT. I finally ticked off the PMP box on my resume and started my ITSM/ITIL journey. 2012 should bring more of the same. I am already on the agenda for the HEUG Alliance in Nashville (March) and formulating proposals for EDUCAUSE Annual Conference (due by Feb 12!) and Open World. I am off to Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training in two weeks. And just before the recess a copy of Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 landed on my desk. So if the projects don’t keep me busy… There is always something new to learn.

I established a host of resolutions for 2012, mostly of the personal-life and health varieties. I won’t bore you with them here, although I feel compelled to mention the robust Excel model I built to track my progress (and my wife’s): naturally, everything rolls neatly into a tri-color dashboard!

More pertinent to this space, I also defined a bunch of work-oriented resolutions. Here goes:

1000 Tweets
100 New Followers
Follow 100 New People/Companies
Post 26 Blogs to jasonshaffner.blogspot.com
Post 100 Blogs to internal department blog
2+ Conference Presentations
1+ New IT/PM Certification
Update our departmental Confluence Wiki at least once every business day

See you again soon; I have at least 25 more blogs in 2012!

What is a project?

2011-11-05T07:53:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago I attended a pre-conference seminar at EDUCAUSE 2011 in Philadelphia on Creating Agile Organizations. during the icebreaking part of the day, the facilitators asked us to huddle at our tables over this question: what is a project? There were audible groans. At least twice I heard "I'm a PMP, I know what a project is." Yet across forty project management professionals we struggled.

Let's examine the PMBOK definition: "A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result."

Out of fairness to the standards boards across the pond, how about the PRINCE2 definition: "A project is a management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified Business Case."

And now some of the definitions the seminar attendees came up with:

A project is a set of activities that are time bound (start/end dates) with a specific set of objectives (scope). Should have some minimum thresholds (e.g. how much time it takes to complete). May be of interest as a track-able item from management's perspective.
A project has discrete scope, defined start/end dates, and meets organizational definitions (hrs, resources, origin) for a "project"; typically outside normal operations.

I look upon these attempts at defining the word and think "Gee, those PMI and PRINCE2 definitions are so much tighter." Their current simplicity reflects untold hours of careful wordsmithing, a painful and unending process as anybody who has ever crafted a mission statement or novel can attest... With such clean definitions out there why is there still so much consternation about "what is a project?"

For some reason (unknown to me) one problem seems to be the lack of precision in the "official" definitions -- they are too broadly applicable, and one must be careful not to treat too many undertakings as "projects" -- thus an interminable attempt to define define "eligibility" for the gravitas-laden title "project".

Consider these thoughts from other groups in the same EDUCAUSE seminar:

It is usually about something large and new (not incremental). (Anything larger than 80 hours.)
Needs approval; needs funding; typically align to strategic vision.
A set of functions to be implemented in a set period of time, that requires more than a defined number of hours.
A request that takes more than one day to complete. Usually involves more than one person.

We could imagine so many potential gating criteria:

8 hours
40 hours
80 hours
200 hours
2,000,000 hours
Has a budget
Has budget > $X
Has more than one resource
More than five resources
Not involving Group X or Group Y
Has IT involvement
Ordained as a project by the governing board

This is beyond wordsmithing; we're talking philosophy now. Every time I find myself in such conversations, i want to tear my hair out. At first I think this differentiation is about reducing red tape--not wanting to burden a small project with the baggage of process and procedure. Sometimes it seems as if the evil root cause is the "cult of project managers" looking at smaller projects as somehow below their station and wanting to maintain the purity of their profession. Other times I think that it is the parochialism of individuals grounding their rules in those witnessed at current or past employers or clients; too often these rules are presented as points of fact. There is no one reason, and no explanation makes the debate all that meaningful to me. More time is sometimes wasted debating whether or not something is a project than just moving on and managing it like one. Why is that such a horrifying proposition for some?

For me, a project is anything that has these characteristics:
- Defined start and end
- Would benefit from a codified strategy mapped on a timeline
- Can be conceived as a series of inter-related actions

In other words: if it smells like a project, it is probably a project. And this: almost any undertaking would benefit from project management. Yes, even those pesky "operations." Just ask my wife: I basically have a GANTT chart for Monday supper! (And definitely had one for our honeymoon, collected in a beautiful green three-ring binder).

What do you think? Hit me via Twitter (@jasonshaffner) or e-mail with your perspective!

Oracle VirtualBox and OBIEE

2011-10-11T06:39:00.001-04:00

Where have you been my whole life, Oracle VM VirtualBox and the OBIEE 11.1.1.5 image? Lurking in plain sight, probably advertised on Oracle corporate and partner Twitter posts just outside the latest 50 each time I pulled out my iPhone between meetings, in elevators, or waiting on line at SBUX. We went through so much trouble configuring a demo machine (with Windows Server 64-bit… ouch) when all we needed to do was hook up to a fat pipe, download you, and turn the key to start.

I learned about the VirtualBox Image last week at #OOW11 in San Francisco, in a throw-away comment from the product manager for OBI Scorecards and Strategy. Flew home and checked the specs – 4 GB RAM? I’ve got that on my home laptop. Fat pipe, not so much. It took nearly 12 hours to download the install packages from ftp.oracle.com but only another hour to get OBIEE up and running.

Other than 4 GB of RAM, what does one need for this install? 7zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) and an FTP client (FileZilla - http://filezilla-project.org/). And Oracle VirtualBox, which you can download from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html

The real heavy lifting (for you network, anyhow) comes with the SampleApp V107 Image. As you can see at this link the download is roughly 25GB. This took forever over my slow Wifi on my slow at-home Comcast connection. The installation guide steps through all the (rather straight-forward) installation steps from that point forward; it also contains all the passwords one needs to get the party started.

Once connected, the “General Index” provides a learning map – literally hundreds of dashboard pages devoted to individual concepts and terminology in OBIEE. For example, dig into Section 0.2 to learn about the security set-up in the Sample App as well as key features in OBIEE such as the “Act As” proxy option. Or navigate to 3.20 to see various options for formatting your Answers reports. Or visit 8.7 to see how OBIEE allows fidelity of interactivity between both relational and flat-file data sources. After traipsing through each dashboard and drilling down to “Edit” with the objective of sorting out the underlying configuration, the power and flexibility of the technology become obvious—and far more tangible than literature, conference presentations, or canned demos.

More later this week after my hands are a little dirtier…

OOW Day Two

2011-10-04T20:54:00.001-04:00

New words / phrases that have entered my vocabulary this week so far:

Hadoop
Exadata
Exalogic
Exalytics
InfiniBand
NoSQL
Big Data
Parallel Everything (vs congruent term Share Nothing)

The day started with keynote address from EMC and Oracle. Interesting session because EMC pitched their hardware solution, including the option of end-user self-service server provisioning, and then Oracle basically said "you don't need those guys [EMC] if you buy our engineered solutions."

No matter what session I attended -- EBS Roadmap, EBS Financials Vision and Strategy, Higher Education Solutions Roadmap, or BI Strategy -- at least 15 minutes was spent on the power and speed of buying packaged HW/SW components from Oracle. This Exa-thing is clearly the focus of this conference, and making applications people talk cores and DRAM seems to be the prime mission. I am a little fatigued.

That said, the conversations about "unstructured data" and Big Data are pretty interesting. EMC demoed a dummy auto insurance app that crunched social media data as an input into pricing -- lots of pictures of drinking on FB and your premium could go up. The technology on display was intellectually compelling; the Big Brother possibilities less so. In our world of admin computing, we generally have the luxury of well-structured data, but the potential tools out there today -- Hadoop is open-source but Oracle is packaging a version -- could have important applications in the academic and research computing arenas.

I wish I could say I learned some things at the EBS and Higher Ed roadmap discussions, but not much has changed since OAUG and HEUG in the spring. 12.2 is "not imminent" and they strongly recommend upgrading soon... PeopleSoft remains the strategic platform for higher ed... Essbase will be the reporting platform for Oracle Fusion GL... Buy Exadata.

The most interesting session of the day was surprising -- who would have suspected that two geeks from the development organization would do the best job so far explaining how all the Exa stuff fits together?

I spent a little quality time on the vendor floor. There was an actual sumo wrestler in diaper, but I didn't get a photo with him. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but the conference doesn't give enough dedicated time for the vendor exhibit hall. Or lunch. Looking forward to Day Three.

OOW Day One

2011-10-03T10:07:00.000-04:00

Sunday is for SIGs – Special Interest Groups oriented around geographic regions, products, or business processes. These groups, associated with the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG), typically meet twice each year – at OAUG Collaborate and Open World. In between, most of the SIGs have e-mail discussion boards, educational webinars, etc. For more info start here: OAUG SIGs

SIGs are a great way to meet people and hear from Oracle. Unfortunately, they’re also held on Sunday before the conference has officially kicked off, so they can be a little sparse. Yesterday, I missed the Upgrade (R12) SIG and E-Business Suite SIG but made it to the Moscone Center in time for the Hyperion SIG. In that session, I learned that Oracle would be announcing later that evening the release of “Exalytics” – an optimized “parallel-everything” pre-built server for analytics, with Essbase at the core. I knew that a major focus for this conference was going to be the Exadata (purpose-built appliance for Oracle Database) and Exalogic (purpose-built appliance for Oracle Middleware) but this was interesting news indeed. Unfortunately, I would have rather found out the release date for the next major Hyperion EPM version, but was told merely “2012” which is not particularly helpful.

The Higher Education User Group (HEUG) is an unusual SIG in that rather than focusing on geography or technology, the HEUG focuses on an industry. We have long been involved in the HEUG, with two current members (Ryan and Tom) of Product Advisory Groups (PAGs) that interface directly with Oracle development to lobby for higher education interests. There was a strong turn-out (at least 50) for this session and they held a reception immediately afterwards at a nearby restaurant to allow for more networking time. Since we use a small piece of pretty much every Oracle product except JDE, we have a little something in common with everyone there. The most interesting dialogue I had was with Lone Star College, which implemented 44 modules (!) of PeopleSoft Enterprise and Campus Solutions in 18 months, with a total of 40 (!!!) customizations platform-wide. Ouch. Makes me feel just a little better about our current slate of upgrade projects…

After rubbing elbows and trading business cards for an hour, we returned to the Moscone Center for the main event – Larry Ellison’s keynote speech. It was a strange one. The San Francisco Giants gave Mr. Ellison a world series ring for his years of support. Partner and CIO of-the-year awards were presented. And then Mr. Ellison began his presentation. For one hour, he talked about hardware. Data compression. Infiniband. DRAM. Parallel everything. Lots of math. Some talk of customer case studies, with the final punchline each time the performance gains. 60x, 18x, 23x, 40x. All very impressive, but a little boring for those of us with application software on the mind. Exalytics was announced with ten minutes to go, and Ellison showed some ugly stats that looked eerily like our own Hyperion Planning performance, and then what would happen if we had Exalyctics. Very exciting, though all talk of pricing was omitted from the slides…

I hope to learn enough this week about Exa- this and Exa- that to put a more layman’s definition together, but my head is spinning far too fast. Off to see Exalytics in action at the 8am keynote; will report back tomorrow!

T-Minus-One to OOW

2011-10-02T03:06:00.001-04:00

First things, first: this blog has very little project management or enterprise systems. But I'm on the road for work, so I’ll be using that fact as an excuse to blog some more esoteric thoughts.

Let us start with Virgin America. Never mind that I was fortunate enough to snag one of two rows on the whole plane with an empty middle seat... Or that I devoured the final book in The Hunger Games (start to finish, no joke) and Episode 2 from Season 1 of "Luther" (which might be my new favorite show). Or that you can borrow a Google Chrome netbook for the flight (if so inclined; I wasn’t). Instead, let's talk price (<$350 RT BOS-SFO) and leg room (ample) and overhead space (not an issue) and entertainment system (back of every seat) and that in-flight food and beverage order system (service for snacks -twice- less than 5 min!) I have a new favorite airline. Sorry, AA…

San Francisco is beautiful, but more crowded that I remember. I bought a 7-day Muni pass, thinking it would prove profitable if I could avoid two taxi trips my whole time here. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trekking thru Chinatown on market day (I have never seen so many Yu Choy greens on a city bus) and don't get me started on the disaster of trying to take the cable car back across town.

Posted to Facebook that I will never complain about the Boston MBTA again after today’s ordeal. The first decision on where to spend my afternoon came from an unexpected rationale -- I left my collar stays at home, and with a presentation ahead of me, a trip to Thomas Pink was in order. I bought the collar "bones" for $25; wish I could afford the shirts... Is there an outlet somewhere? The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) was right around the corner from Pink (and the Moscone Center—see below). I hadn't done my research and literally had no idea what to expect. Although I have a quarrel with some modern art no matter the venue, I was overwhelmingly pleased. I can never see too many exhibits of photography in Paris, and I thoroughly enjoyed the special exhibit of furniture and electronics designed by Dieter Rams (from Braun). His ten design principles are worthy advice for any IT professional. The current rotation from the permanent collection was solid, too; I especially liked a triptych of Lichtenstein paintings that emulated Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series.

After touring the galleries and sipping an Anchor Steam at the café, I walked two blocks to the Moscone Center. 2 minutes to get my badge, and nearly 5 to secure the NASCAR-like sponsor-emblazoned messenger bag and other materials. I will share my observations on the schedule and other materials in another blog tomorrow. Before leaving the convention center, I took advantage of the emptiness to marvel at Larry's boat. That thing is huge.

Near the hotel, a restaurant called Pescatore called out to me because the wicker chairs outside made me thing of Paris (even though Pescatore it is an Italian restaurant); I make a walk by reservation, hit the hotel for a quick refresh, and head back for a solid dinner of mixed greens w gorgonzola balsamic and a fantastic cod with potatoes, rapini, and caper butter. Their artisan Manhattan ain't half bad.

Which brings me to the lobby (free Internet) and the iPad, to blog meandering thoughts from the day. Have I mentioned lately how much I love this thing?

Gearing Up for San Fran, #OOW11, and Picasso

2011-09-25T12:54:00.004-04:00

Less than a week until the first sessions of Oracle Open World. As I mentioned in a blog last week, it has been six years since I attended this massive and overwhelming convention. How many companies has Oracle acquired since then? Twenty? A hundred? Yet some things never change: the sessions I’m most excited about pertain to this mysterious thing known as “Fusion” (cue ominous music).

I have never had the chance to play the “tourist” in San Francisco, and by the looks of the packed agenda for Open World, there won’t be occasion for it this year. My Thursday-morning presentation will hang over my head all week, as will the worry that I will choose poorly among the hundreds of concurrent sessions. I aim to strike a balance between learning tangible things that will help my team immediately with seeking serendipity—stumbling across something novel and innovative that could make a real difference for the institution 2-3 years hence. My example of the latter from six years ago was a session on XML Publisher / BI Publisher which was still shiny and new… (I’m a big fan, and still trying to gain traction with this tool at my institution, but that’s another story for another day…)

San Francisco has a special place in my heart—I spent the first six weeks of my post-college career there, with a cubicle on a mid-teens floor in the Transamerica Pyramid. We were sixty fresh-faced college grads, with aspirations to fly high in corporate finance, psyched about the fancy Motorola SkyTel pagers that for those few weeks served to coordinate bar-hopping rather than signal a crisis. My favorite memory was kayaking in Sausalito, where we basked in sunlight and watched the fog darken the streets of the city.

Thanks to Virgin America—far and away the cheapest direct flight option out of Logan—I actually have a full afternoon on Saturday to relax and enjoy San Francisco beyond the Moscone Center and environs. What shall I do? (Other than put finishing touches on my presentation!) I had been considering Alcatraz, until I saw that the de Young Museum has a Picasso exhibit that was just extended to October 10th. Perfect. (Even better since my wife doesn’t particularly care for Picasso, which means I don’t have to feel lousy that she’s missing it!)

I wonder which will prove more serendipitous, the Picasso exhibit or the random eye-opening Oracle technology or applications session I plop in the 2pm slot on Wednesday afternoon?

Nature vs. Nurture for IT

2011-09-20T20:25:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I read (by way of @corpitguy) an article by Kerry Doyle on "Underrated IT Skills") and forwarded it along to my network. Further reflection made me wonder: to what extent is success in IT a by-product of nature vs. nurture?

Take project management. Nurture plays a role--one does not spring from the womb citing PMBOK. But isn't there also something to be said for intuition? An organized mind? Coping skills? There are people in this world born to manage projects and others for whom no quantum of PMI-accredited instruction would make a difference. Which leads me to the two essential skills (or qualities) missing from Doyle's list: problem-solving and resourcefulness. In my humble opinion, there may be no two more critical elements to a successful IT career. Allow me to explain...

Q: "How'd you figure that out?"
A1: "I read the manual."
A2: "Found the answer on Google."
A3: "Posted a question to a forum."
A4: "I don't know, I just did."

In the world of information technology, complex challenges come with the territory; it is rare that such challenges prove fundamentally intractable or truly unique, never-before-seen-in-this-world. Asking for help is normal, but nothing frustrates me (as a manager) more than when i find an answer to some impossible question upon my first Google search. Such situations belie a dearth of basic resourcefulness. Likewise, the unread user guide: a remarkably common failing in my experience. I understand where this comes from; there is a common assumption that product documentation stinks, but it is a dangerous and expensive presumption. Without a shred of hard data to support me, I would be willing to bet that millions of dollars are squandered each year on the effort of reverse-engineering or otherwise divining answers already made explicit in vendor-supplied materials... (FWIW, this problem is not unique to IT systems...I know I have paid the price for misplacing user guides for my television and DVD player!)

For an actual authority on the benefits of resourcefulness, check out this article from Harvard Business Review (HBR) regarding the criticality of this skill for executives.

The cornerstone of problem solving is taught in elementary school--the scientific method. Identify problem, state hypothesis, test hypothesis, repeat. From this simple building block people grow into talented or deficient problem solver; how much of that talent is acquired through drill and how much stems from a natural gift?

As a manager of a large IT organization, I have to believe development works... What are we doing to this end? Modeling, for one--investing effort in promoting successes and best practices for others to emulate. Advertising successes. Investing in professional training. Yet at the end of the day isn't an elementary-school technique (the scientific method) the most important tool of all?

There is a place for nature, too. In considering my own development, I do not recall explicit lessons in how to solve problems or uncover resources that might help me. I remember independence, the opportunity to shape my own destiny, engage the right partners, scour the Internet, whatever. My primary mission--and source of pride--was to solve problems. And that was something I was born to do.

A Bag of (Trick) Questions

2011-09-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

Every summer I sit down for 30 minutes with the members of my team—roughly forty business analysts, systems operations analysts, product managers, and project managers. I inherited this tradition from my predecessor and the first time around I found it to be a valuable undertaking—challenging as may be to execute forty-odd sessions in the vacation-rich summer months!

When I was new to my position the approach was rather straight-forward – I simply asked what staff members thought was going well (or poorly) in the department and what they were looking for from me as a leader. In those early months, their suggestions, questions and concerns were huge. And although I had no doubt about the value of repeating the exercise, I was fearful that repeating last year’s “agenda” could be a recipe for long stretches of silence.

I crave staff input – I want to understand everything: motivators and de-motivators, career objectives, opportunities for improvement for the department and the institution. Furthermore, as months upon months of Sunday’s “The Corner Office” in The New York Times has taught me, it is equally important to understand individual likes and dislikes, favored weekend activities, favorite books, etc. And as a part-time cinephile and foodie, I wanted to ask about favorite movies and meals!

Too many questions, too many interviews, and too little time: I needed a system. Being an applications guy, I entertained the thought of building a systems solution myself… Or scouring the App Store. But then I realized (for once?) that technology was not the answer.

Hidden away in a filing cabinet outside my office was a laminator. I blew the dust from the lid, framed out my discussion prompts using an MS Word label template, pre-heated the laminator, ran my labels through, and located a long-abandoned paper-slicing guillotine stowed behind a copier on the second floor. Interestingly, nobody inquired why I was partaking in light arts and crafts on a Tuesday afternoon.

The next morning, I had my first of 40 interviews. The rules were simple: for the first 20 minutes, you draw questions from the bag; we’ll leave the last ten minutes to talk about anything else on your mind; in that time you’re free to turn the questions around or continue drawing prompts.

It worked. The conversations flowed nicely, a neat balance between quasi-interview and idle chit-chat. By the second week, rumors about “the bag” (a very snazzy Whole Foods fabric bag with ample room to shuffle the laminated cards) had circulated but since the average participant only saw about 30% of the questions most people were still surprised by the questions. (Although toward the end I fielded several prepared responses to the exceedingly difficult “vegetable” question).

On the corner of my desk is a legal pad filled with detailed notes from these discussions – I have started to pull out key themes, insightful quotes, and lists of the eclectic musical and movie tastes in the department. I feel closer to the team, more aware of their needs and personalities. I am proud of my “innovation” (quotes because it is unlikely I can claim IP over this technique) but already thinking – what shall I do next year?

OOW Schedule Madness

2011-09-08T19:38:00.000-04:00

A lot has happened since 2005, the only previous time I had the good fortune to attend Oracle Open World in San Francisco. Forget about the litany of political, technological, and cultural transformations that may have taken place—I am talking about the fact that in 2005 I had not (re) met my wife and had never changed a poopy diaper. It has been a busy seven years!

Oracle Open World may have changed, too—I won’t really know until I arrive on the ground—but the sheer scale of the event sure hasn’t diminished. I spent the last two hours trying to optimize my calendar and my head is spinning. I can only imagine the condition I will be in after four days of sessions and the closing event when I endeavor (at the last minute) to practice my lines for our Thursday presentation. Final day presentations are the pits…

Unlike many conferences I have attended in the past, there don’t seem to be dead spots in the program. It helps to have a broad set of interests; this year I want to see EBS R12 upgrade case studies and OBIEE implementation tips and tricks and most anything Fusion. Sessions on GRC, Advanced Procurement, and Exadata would be nice if I can find room. The situation would be worse if two members of my team weren’t covering the PeopleSoft HCM and Oracle Hyperion EPM realms. As it stands, I have packed every slot and wished the system would allow double- or triple-bookings (at least temporarily!).

[Although I suppose if the hashtags are clean and the Tweeps are active then I can probably virtually attend three sessions simultaneously via Twitter, right?]

Consider the first non-keynote, non-user-group session of the convention – Monday at 11am. I was excited about “Finance Modernization: Streamlining Processes and Systems” until I saw one from McDonald’s on Hyperion Planning. I would love to geek-out on technical sessions on ADF or OAF, but that’s just not in the cards… What about the executive session on OBIEE? Or an E-Business Suite roadmap session, an hour on the Fusion user experience, or a cool-sounding session on Oracle’s use of its own hardware and software. Oh, and Tom Mayhew from the Harvard team is presenting his lecture on Approval Workflow Engine (AWE) in PeopleSoft 9.1. Decisions, decisions. There has to be an app for this problem.

My favorite title so far? How about “What If Kramer Were Your DBA and Seinfeld Tuned Your Database?” on Sunday at 4pm. Genius.

When I planned this blog, I expected to spend a few paragraphs talking about the sessions that seemed most interesting, but that is a tall order with 25 sessions on my tentative calendar. Keynotes are not my thing, but I am excited for the Benioff (Salesforce.com) one on Wednesday. Honestly, since the last time I attended OOW they were announcing Fusion and Applications Unlimited, I am excited for every session talking about the long-delayed realities of the grand vision I heard

Before signing off, I must put another plug in for my own talk at 10:30am on Thursday ("Harvard University's Procure-to-Pay Transformation Using Oracle iProcurement"). Now back to writing the PowerPoint deck for it…

Oracle Open World Teaser

2011-09-06T09:30:00.000-04:00

I am excited (and terribly nervous) to be presenting this year for the first time at Oracle Open World. Exactly one month from today (October 6th) at 10:30 a.m. I will be standing (slightly trembling) at the front of Moscone West 3024 with a colleague from Huron Consulting Group to talk about our implementation of Oracle iProcurement here at the university. According to the abstract, this is what we will be talking about (the PowerPoint remains a work in progress):

"Learn about Harvard's recent deployment of Oracle iProcurement. Replacing a homegrown payment voucher system integrated with Oracle E-Business Suite, the project tightened controls while providing direct access to hundreds of suppliers, streamlining operations, shortening cycles, and saving the university millions of dollars. In this session, Harvard presents deployment strategies and lessons learned, technical details of integration between Oracle E-Business Suite and third-party content providers and suppliers (including e-invoicing), and an overview of how Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition helped diagnose process bottlenecks and achieve key performance indicators for operations and cost savings."

The Harvard Gazette published an article this week on the implementation’s impact from a business standpoint; the PDF can be found here (search inside for “HCOM”).

The purpose of my Open World presentation is to tell the same story from the IT and project management point-of-view—how we configured Oracle E-Business Suite, integrated with SciQuest HigherMarkets, deployed the system in a series of overlapping waves, and managed substantial change management challenges along the way. We also plan to show how we have utilized Oracle Hyperion Web Analysis and Essbase to analyze the success of our deployment and change management strategies and support the talking points about cost savings and efficiency cited in the Gazette article.

We are aggressively fine-tuning our story and trying to make the presentation as handsome as a couple of non-graphical designers can. Whether you are interested in the application architecture details or the project management strategies, I hope to see you there!

Session Title: Harvard University’s Procure-to-Pay Transformation with Oracle iProcurement
Date/Time: October 6, 2011 10:30am
Location: Moscone West 3024
Session #: 9754

Reflections on the PMP

2011-09-04T14:05:00.002-04:00

It would be unethical to give away details about the Project Management Professional (PMP) examination I passed early last month. But let me say this much: I was woefully under-prepared and I am grateful to have survived.

Project management has been central to my career since… basically forever. Before I had heard anyone referred to as “project manager” I unknowingly used project management techniques (detailed project schedules, milestone lists, communication plans) all the time. Immediately after college I worked on a sell-side M&A deal for a company specializing in PM software. And when I moved into IT consulting, my boutique employer expected every consultant to partake in project management. Before long, when people asked what I did for a living I replied that I was a project manager.

Yet I never pursued credentials. There were several factors in this decision, but largely it was because I wasn’t convinced the PMP was worth the time, effort, and expense. My skepticism grew in part from a handful of paint-by-numbers project managers I had encountered along the way—individuals who could quote chapter-and-verse from the PMBOK but could not facilitate a meeting—and in part from the fact that so many of the excellent project managers from whom I learned were not PMPs. So I continued leading projects, with no intention of sitting for the test.

Earlier this year, two things made me reconsider: First, another certification program – the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) – which I pursued early in 2011. Second, the availability of high-quality online training from Element K.

For those who are not familiar, ITIL is a framework of good practices (I would have said “best” but according to ITIL good is better than best…) for managing the design and delivery of information technology services. For experienced practitioners, the concepts are old hat– but the strength of the framework is the shared vocabulary and a careful delineation of roles and functions. When I reached the unit on responsibility charting (“RACI”) a light bulb went on: I need to do the PMP.

Online training was important because of both my hectic workday schedule and an almost-crippling distaste for classroom training. Element K to the rescue, with a comprehensive 35-PDU-granting PMP class. By squeezing in an hour most days before eight, two or three hours every weekend, I found myself engrossed in the rhythm of the PMBOK: inputs-tools-outputs, inputs-tools-outputs, inputs-tools-outputs. For a career project manager, few aspects proved revolutionary but the material certainly wasn’t dull. I found myself hesitating before saying “task” when I was talking about an “activity” and looking back at old projects to map the deliverables we created against the required outputs from the PMBOK (by and large our work stands up to the test). The quality of my own project management documents has absolutely improved thanks to the online class and subsequent exam prep.

How did I end up feeling so grossly unprepared? Mainly I should have done more homework on the actual exam preparation; instead, I finished the Element K training class and downloaded their exam prep tool, extrapolating from the quality of the class itself that the prep tool would be equally strong. Much to my surprise, all the questions suggested rote memorization would be the key: the practice exam almost exclusively asked questions such as “How many inputs are there to the Control Project Schedule process?” whereas I had expected scenarios. The practice exam had perhaps one question on earned value, schedule performance index, EAC/BAC, and the other formulas that I had assumed (rightly, as it turns out) from the class to be really important.

I spent several days doing drill—counting the inputs, tools, and outputs; memorizing which ones didn’t update the project management plan and which ones didn’t have organization process assets as an input; reciting aloud the matrix of process groups and knowledge areas. After a great experience learning the PMBOK, I was disheartened and slightly panicked. I rushed to the Internet and searched for sample questions, just in case the Element K tool was misguided. Luckily I stumbled across Oliver Lehmann’s site and found the questions I had been expected. In an 11th hour frenzy I mastered these questions (but it was too late for me to acquire the famous “Rita’s Book”—I may be the only PMP around who can claim that!) and read the PMBOK twice more. I was as prepared as I could be under the circumstances... Thank goodness for the re-take policy, I thought.

The words that keep coming into my head are subtlety and common sense. In comparison to many standardized exams I have taken in the past I had a tough time gauging my certainty regarding the answer I had clicked. I started second-guessing myself, looking for hidden agendas in the questions—what are they really trying to ask me here? That is a dangerous tactic, talking yourself into changing your answer. Fortunately I managed to stop myself, clicked the button to end the exam, and waited for my results.

In retrospect, the exercise was absolutely worthwhile and despite my decade-plus managing large projects, I feel better positioned than ever for our current slate of ERP projects. I am eager to participate more actively in the project management community and encourage my team to standardize processes and templates around PMI standards. I still believe there is no substitute for hands-on experience, but I see the value of being vetted by a community of experts.

I only have one question for you PMPs out there: what am I supposed to do with the lapel pin?

What a User Wants

2011-03-19T18:15:00.007-04:00

The typical budgeting user wants a simple user interface for entering budget data; around the implementation team we called this data form the “blue sky” (for reasons that will soon become clear).

The requested design was simple enough in concept:

1 Page drop-down to select (Org)
Scenario, Version, and Period in the columns
All other Chart of Accounts dimensions in the rows
Take advantage of dimension security to limit output
Rely on Planning’s suppression feature to show only valid (previously used) combinations

Figure 1: The “Blue Sky” Data Form In Action

At first blush, the resulting screen looks rather innocuous. And during the first stage of unit testing, it rendered successfully—and quickly, at that. The room broke out in cheers and high fives; then the application server crashed.

“But it can’t be the data form!” the team pleaded. “It loaded! It was fast!” We logged an SR with Oracle and kept testing. Your form is too big, Oracle told us. Build smaller forms!

By default, Hyperion Planning warns the user if the potential grid (column elements x row elements) exceeds 1,000. At Harvard, even a small department in one of our smaller Planning Applications (roughly = school) would have nearly 4,000,000,000 potential combinations in only three dimensions (Fund, Act-Sub, Root). As we began to analyze the work Planning and Essbase were doing behind the scenes—calculating potential combinations, reserving in memory a virtual grid to store the data, executing the query, populating the grid, applying security and suppression logic, etc.—it became clear that we needed to pursue an alternate design paradigm.

Figure 2: Go-Live Data Form

This revamped design performed well for all applications, irrespective of size, as the maximum grid size was the same for all schools. However, the design was predicated on one critical assumption: that the end user knew his or her financial details well enough to select the chart of accounts combination from the application. Because there is no ability in Hyperion Planning to auto-filter or cascade lists of values based on previous selections, the user might be forced to pick randomly from the other lists of values, desperately seeking valid combinations.

Figure 3: When the User Can't Find Data

That users did not know their full accounting strings was something of a surprise to the application design team. Our immediate response was to train users how to use reports and data forms together, toggling within the Hyperion Workspace between the two. Although this was a reasonable short-term answer, it was hardly a long-term solution. The team went back to the drawing board to define a better data-entry solution.

To be continued… at the HEUG Alliance 2011 and OAUG COLLABORATE ’11 conferences:

HEUG Alliance 2011 - Monday March 28, 12:45-1:45pm, Room 712

OAUG COLLABORATE '11 - Sunday April 10, 1:30-2:30pm, Room W304D

Hyperion Planning Data Form Best Practices

2011-03-14T08:01:00.001-04:00

In Oracle’s Hyperion Planning, data forms are configurable screens that allow end users to input and adjust data in their active budget and forecast scenarios. Configuration is remarkably easy–one of the true strengths of the application. Through a wizard-like interface, designers can easily define which dimensions appear as spreadsheet-familiar rows and columns, as drop-down “page” selections, and as fixed point-of-view (“POV”) dimensions. Unfortunately, the layout wizard will allow a designer to create any template—even one that can cause the application server to crash!

[One of my favorite lessons learned from the early days of our implementation of Hyperion Planning… As the project team began to build data forms in our development environment, the “preview” option in the data form wizard was identified as a root cause for frequent application-tier failures. Rather than identify the data form design itself as the culprit, we authorized a customization to prevent users from activating the preview feature!]

By default, Planning raises an alert to the end user anytime the potential data grid (row dimension members x column dimension members) exceeds 1,000. Any guesses about a typical potential grid size of our initial design? How about 4,000,000,000? Yikes.

Customers initially requested all Chart of Accounts members in the rows of the data entry forms—similar to the Excel spreadsheets they had long used for annual budget submissions. Unfortunately, the Hyperion Planning gurus gave us the following advice:

Row and Column contain dense dimensions only
Page and Point of View (POV) contain sparse dimensions only
Suppress Missing Data option enabled so as to not display Rows or Columns without data
Split data forms into multiple data forms that contain fewer Rows and Columns
To put it more simply – KEEP DATA FORMS SMALL!

Everything about our initial design contradicted the recommended practice. So how would we balance customer needs with performance standards?

Learn more at the HEUG Alliance 2011 and OAUG COLLABORATE ’11 conferences:
HEUG Alliance 2011 - Monday March 28, 12:45-1:45pm, Room 712
OAUG COLLABORATE '11 - Sunday April 10, 1:30-2:30pm, Room W304D

Dude, Where's My Budget?

2011-03-11T13:26:00.005-05:00

I have a busy few weeks ahead, traveling to Denver for the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) Alliance 2011 and to Orlando for the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) COLLABORATE '11. At both conferences, I will present a paper on Harvard's implementation of Hyperion Planning. The session, entitled "Dude, Where's My Budget? An Innovative Budget-Entry Solution in Hyperion Planning" (a groan-inducing title of which I'm very proud), was developed in collaboration with Ryan Sullivan, our crackshot Planning and Essbase Product Manager.

The session is targeted to a broad audience, balancing business context, solution design, and interactive demonstration, with a smattering of old-fashioned "geeking out."

Presentation summary: "Learn how Harvard University used Hyperion Planning features and outside-the-box thinking to build a robust data-entry solution for managing complex and confusing budgets. Harvard developed a network of interconnected data entry web forms to allow planners to drill-down from their high-level budget to the lowest level seven-segment chart of account budget. The end result is 50% report, 50% data form, and 100% geared toward improving the user experience and simplifying the process of entering budgets and forecasts."

My goal is to demonstrate the following themes:

Overview of Hyperion Planning implementation at Harvard University
The challenges (and potential solutions) for detailed budgeting and forecasting with a massive chart of accounts
Using under-the-radar native functionality to streamline navigation of data entry forms in Hyperion Planning
Effective techniques for managing continuous service improvement

Over the days leading up to the conference, I'll be posting details of the presentation and looking for questions or comments from potential attendees (please feel free to post here or contact via Twitter) that I can incorporate into the final presentation.

For those of you already registered for these conferences, time and location information provided below. I look forward to seeing you!

HEUG Alliance 2011 - Monday March 28, 12:45-1:45pm, Room 712
OAUG COLLABORATE '11 - Sunday April 10, 1:30-2:30pm, Room W304D

Four Upgrades

2011-03-09T06:23:00.001-05:00

Two years ago we talked about the possibility of overlapping ERP upgrades as if it were an insane, doomsday scenario. Yet here we are, upgrading PeopleSoft Enterprise HCM, Oracle E-Business Suite Financials, and Hyperion Planning (a.k.a. "EPM"). And, oh by the way, let's replace existing reporting tools with OBIEE+. How did we end up here?

The economy had something to do with it. Not only because we put the brakes on funding our own large-scale IT projects, but because others did. We don't like being first movers, so when others postponed their projects, we postponed ours even longer.

Oracle's support timelines had something to do with it. Not only schedules for declining support levels, but also recent decisions about extensions of those timelines, waivers of extra fees, etc., which may have skewed behavior at Harvard and our peers.

Our upgrade strategy had something to do with it. Some organizations have a codified ethos. Upgrade immediately. Upgrade as late as possible. Upgrade in-kind. Upgrade with enhancement. Never upgrade. Our ERP upgrades have tended to follow a Goldilocks approach on timing—never too early, hopefully not too late. They have generally also taken a hard-line on scope—no new features unless absolutely necessary. So what happens when the business demands more dramatic expansion of features? And if new executive leadership defines de-customization as a strategic objective? Goodbye, miminum scope.

Our operational calendar had something to do with it. One business line says April or bust. The budgeting system is off-limits from December to June. Financials stakeholders don't want anything putting fiscal year end at risk, so that rules out June to September.

Slip a year here and a year there and you end up with 4 Upgrades proceeding in parallel.

We didn't want to be in this position, but there is a silver lining. We should realize economies of scale for project management and quality assurance. We can combine forces on common tools such as BI Publisher. We can share costs on dedicated testing and training facilities that no one project could afford. And from a cultural standpoint, the entire organization shifts into “project mode” at the same time, rather than in pockets. Scary as that might be, isn’t it also a little bit exciting? (Or maybe just for a dyed-in-the-wool implementation guy like me…)

The Problem of Acronyms in IT

2011-02-28T08:21:00.011-05:00

About a year ago I sat with a colleague at the local watering hole. We started talking about the pros and cons for a certain technology solution. A three-letter acronym – by now I forget which one, so let’s call it ABC – was involved. He argued the merits of ABC and I spoke of obstacles. He suggested resolutions and I countered with more emphatic concerns. Eventually we agreed to disagree. As I lifted my pint glass, I realized something was wrong.

“When you say ABC,” I said, “what, exactly, do you mean?”

Turns out we were talking about two entirely different solutions, which fortunately explained some of the more confusing points in our exchange!

Lately, I have been studying the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), in anticipation of applying its standards to the segment of my group focused on access management for the Harvard ERP systems. The framework is by-and-large common sense – things that many of us learned through doing, but not always with a shared nomenclature. But it is positively riddled with acronyms. A sampling of this morning’s alphabet soup: CMDB, CMS, SKMS, CI, and PIR. In only 30 minutes of Element K training! To pass the certification, I see flashcards in my future…

In part, the problem stems from the lack of an International Institute for Acronym Definition (there’s one for everything else, why not this?) However, it also reflects a broader challenge we information technology professionals face almost daily: simple phrases co-opted by corporations (and often subsequently trademarked!), divergent stakeholder interpretations that take on lives of their own, and the frequent omission contextual detail. For information technology, sometimes the context is not even enough – we recycle and reuse phrases even within the same sub-disciplines of our world.

Consider “CMS” – a repeat offender in the acronym-ubiquity-and-ambiguity category. A quick search on Wikipedia yields a full page of disambiguation options, including TWELVE in the “computing” sub-category (not one of them ITIL’s configuration management system).

I am not suggesting we abandon acronyms; it would be terribly unwieldy to repeat fully qualified names time and again. So what can we do? Legends in every document? An IT-acronym registration service?

Here’s a funny link I found while making sure such a body didn’t already exist: International Association for Important Unnecessary Acronyms

The User Who Knew Too Much

2011-02-02T17:29:00.002-05:00

Every IT professional has a trove of war stories about challenging customers or end users. These “problem” users are not of a homogeneous sort—I can think of a half-dozen classifications off the top of my head. But today I have one particular breed in mind: the user possessing too much knowledge of an application. He might have been an implementer in a past life. He might even have been part of the project team that established the system. Sure, there is a sub-species of this user whose knowledge is dated—tied to an ages-ago release that has long since changed. But we are concerned here with the other sub-species, the user whose knowledge is current; he might even have an active user account on one of the pre-production environments. He is a most dangerous creature.

“Our old boss was like that,” one of my product managers told me. “We had to take her access away.”

For our implementation of Hyperion Planning, I have become “that user.”

The deployment project ended in November 2010, but this is my first year using the system to model my own departmental revenue and expenses. It has been hard, for all the reasons that budget-building and performance-monitoring are challenging activities. But old habits die hard—and I can’t help but generate lists of potential solutions. “Couldn’t we do X?” I ask. “Check out the nifty form I configured on DEV… When can I get it on PROD?”

I try to stop myself. I preface every email or call with a heart-felt admission that I know better. In the end I am my own worst enemy; I helped write the change management rules, to make sure that enhancements are treated with due rigor: formally defined and prioritized, tuned for extensibility and performance, integrated into communications and education plans. One-off solutions are dangerous—I know this and have preached it to hundreds of clients through the years.

But I can’t stop pushing.

Thank goodness my product manager holds the line. “This is great feedback,” he says. “I’ll include these for discussion at the next working group.” I can accept that.

Does the PMO Need a Login?

2011-01-30T21:11:00.000-05:00

Does a project manager have a responsibility to experience (hands-on) an information system s/he manages? What about the members of the governance bodies weighing in on decisions about scope, design, etc.? Does their judgment suffer from lacking an empirical perspective?

Last week I asked a colleague for his thoughts on effective project management. Although he offered a host of personal insights gleaned from twenty years in business analysis and information systems projects, I latched onto one nugget: “they should at least have a login to the system!”

The comment struck a chord. Early in my career, I decided that to be an effective manager of ERP strategy and execution I needed first to walk a day in the developer’s shoes. I paid my dues, in frigid machine rooms, code-development caves, UAT sessions, and conference room pilots. The benefits of those days in the trenches serve me well.

Many project managers believe that their talent is to apply a set of tools and best practices to any project; for them, the what, the why, and the for-whom are irrelevant to the job of arranging tasks, completing core deliverables, and delivering projects on-time and on-budget.

Clearly, this colleague disagrees. In his mind, a project manager’s ability to parse complex issues of scope and change management depends on a certain willingness to know the system, its inherent complexities, the business problems it intends to solve, and its efficacy at doing so. For him, a lack of interest in getting one’s hands dirty is symptomatic of an overarching detachment that ultimately renders the project manager ineffectual. In some ways, this colleague might say such detachment prevents other members of the team from viewing the project manager as a member of the team—which in turn could have broad implications on engagement and dedication, openness and honesty, and the overall success of the initiative.

What do you think?

Gearing Up for Spring Conferences

2011-01-29T20:46:00.002-05:00

I am excited about presenting for the fourth time at the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) Alliance conference. The cheesy title I picked for this year's presentation? "Dude, Where's My Budget: An Innovative Budget-Entry Solution in Hyperion Planning" (C'mon, you've gotta have a cheesy title to fit in!)

A lot of work remains to whip this story into shape for the mid-February upload deadline, but this year I face an added challenge -- converting this year's presentation into a more in-depth white paper and slightly modified presentation for my appearance two weeks later at the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) Collaborate 11 conference in Orlando.

On the face of things, this may seem a little bit like taking two college courses with an overlapping reading list -- but I am trying to think carefully about the unique characteristics of these two audiences. For example, how might the needs of a homogeneous higher education crowd differ from the multiple-vertical audience at OAUG? Should I have more technical emphasis for one group vs. the other?

Plenty to think about in the next 2-4 weeks!

NOTE: Check out my previous HEUG presentations by clicking on Presentations in the menu bar at the top of the page.

A Brief Statement of Purpose

2011-01-29T11:10:00.002-05:00

Welcome to my new blog -- Putting ERP to Work in Higher Ed. I realize that's a terrible title, and hope to have an epiphany soon. This is my fifth or sixth foray into blogging, but my first attempt at something resembling a "professional" blog about my day job.

In the coming weeks, look for information about my upcoming presentations at the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) Alliance 2011 and the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) Collaborate '11. Read about lessons I've learned for managing projects, implementing systems, and trying to keep up with the rapid (or is it "rabid"?) pace of information technology. Also, learn about the ongoing challenges for managing the financial systems footprint at Harvard University.

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter -- @jasonshaffner.