Examining the ongoing challenges of delivering high-quality, value-added ERP services in Higher Education.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Last year I blogged about the struggles establishing my schedule for
Oracle Open World. Lo and behold, another year gone by, my next flight
to San Francisco is only two weeks away, and I find myself in the same
quandry. I spent more than an hour sifting through hundreds and hundreds
of sessions, yet I feel unsatisfied with my schedule. The current
iteration is heavy on E-Business Suite, dips one toe in the water for
Fusion Apps, PeopleTools, and EPM, and somehow OBIEE, my personal
hobby-horse, hardly makes an appearance. Yet the prospect of opening the
schedule builder again is severely unattractive. What to do? Should I
start over and put my faith in the automated schedule builder? Farm this
out to my team? Wait until I'm onsite and employ the
close-eyes-and-point technique?
Here is what I've got so far -- what should go?
- Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management: The Un-Scorecard Manual
- Oracle Fusion Middleware in Higher Education
- Higher Education User Group (HEUG) Update
- Oracle OpenWorld Welcome Keynote: Oracle and Fujitsu
- Oracle OpenWorld Keynote: Shift Complexity
- Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business
- General Session: Executive Briefing on Oracle's EPM Strategy and Roadmap
- General Session: A Panel of Masterminds: Where Are Oracle Applications Headed?
- Oracle Financials: Strategy, Update, and Roadmap
- Oracle iProcurement for Dramatic Business Performance Improvement Across the Enterprise
- Achieving Business Transformation with Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Applications
- Oracle Fusion Applications: Technical Architecture Deep Dive
- Experience Procure-to-Pay Transformation with Oracle Payables 12.1
- Oracle OpenWorld Keynote: Oracle and Infosys
- Boost Oracle Hyperion EPM Reporting ROI with Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite
- Oracle OpenWorld Keynote: Oracle and Intel
- General Session: How and Where Oracle Is Investing in Education and Research
- Personalize and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite Applications with Rich Mashups
- Five Reasons to Upgrade to PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.52
- Mobile Solutions for Oracle E-Business Suite Applications: Technical Insight
- Oracle OpenWorld Keynote: See More, Act Faster: Oracle Business Analytics
- Integrating Oracle EPM and Oracle ERP: Options and Implementation Examples
- Improve Efficiency in Receivables with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1
- Cut Costs by as Much as 90 Percent with Accounts Payable Automation
Labels: #OOW12, Conferences, OOW, Oracle
Thursday, April 12, 2012
It has been three weeks now since I spent a few days in the
Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center for the Higher Education User Group (HEUG)
Alliance '12 Conference. This conference brings together IT professionals from higher education customers of Oracle ERP systems for three days of information sharing, networking, and discussion. Hard to believe, but this was my fifth year attending (and presenting) although it seems like only yesterday I was a newbie (at MGM Grand that year...)
My organization is fortunate to have three members of the Product Advisory Groups (PAGs) to provide feedback and input to Oracle Corporation as they plan the future direction for various systems and modules. While my PAG reps arrived in Nashville on Thursday, I didn’t arrive until Sunday. By that time they almost knew their way around the “bio-dome” and helped me avoid getting totally lost! They also forged some strong relationships (I hope) with other institutions and made our wishes known to the powers that be in Oracle Product Management!
The Executive Forum was quite insightful this year.
Michael Horn from the
Innosight Institute, who co-wrote
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns with Clay Christensen and Curtis Johnson, was especially evocative in his discussion of the pressures on higher education and the notion of “disruptive innovation.” My favorite bit was “why did you hire that milkshake” – see
here for more info… We also heard from
Nicole Engelbert from Ovum regarding market trends and Tom Fisher from Oracle Cloud Services.
In the general sessions I was able to spend time learning about Oracle E-Business Suite, Fusion Applications, Oracle Hyperion EPM, and OBIEE. It is always insightful to learn how other institutions are using these applications. It was especially fun to see old friends from Harvard’s implementation of Hyperion Planning present about their progress at Berkeley! And Fusion Accounting Hub (including Essbase under the covers replacing GL Balances) was mighty intriguing... My own presentation (Oracle iProcurement) was sparsely attended but we fielded several good questions – not a tremendous success, but far from a failure.
Perhaps the brightest success of the week was that the E-Business Suite PAG -- generally a minority at the conference -- decided to call attention to itself by passing out Mardi Gras beads at the opening afternoon Mix and Mingle. The beads were quite popular and generated a lot of positive buzz. When HEUG President Ted Simpson strode on stage wearing a string of purple (or were they green?) beads the EBS folks went crazy!
In summary, an exhausting but valuable few days... Major kudos to HEUG leadership and the Alliance program committee for their hard work! I look forward to seeing everyone next year in Indianapolis!
Labels: Alliance12, Conferences, HEUG
Saturday, November 5, 2011
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!
Labels: #PMOT, Conferences, Project Management, Rants
Monday, October 3, 2011
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!
Labels: #OOW11, Conferences, OAUG
Sunday, September 25, 2011
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?
Labels: #OOW11, Conferences, OOW11, Oracle, Travel
Thursday, September 8, 2011
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…
Labels: Conferences, OOW11, Oracle, Rants