I'm Back

Hello all, I'm back in the blogging world. I started a new position with Paycor in July of 2010 and have been totally focused on that transition. I am now making a renewed effort to my personal growth and commitments, one of which includes monthly updates. Here are a couple of updates on what I'm doing in my new role.

I am a Software Development Team Lead responsible for the HR Performer product line. This is a SaaS based HRIS product targeted at companies with more than 50 employees. My team has responsibility for the entire application development lifecycle, product support, and maintenance. We are working hard to improve the features provided by the product.

Most of you know that I am a huge proponent of continuous learning. In support of that, we have started a certification study group within the team. We are preparing for the Web Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (70-515) exam. We have been meeting during lunch 1 day a week. I am going to challenge the team to complete the book and exam by June, 2011. The first one to get certified will get an MCP shirt.

That's all for now. Look for the next update no later than next month.

Gung Ho, Friend

The team recently wrapped up its third book. This time we read Gung Ho even though there was some apprehension around it. I have to say it was an excellent book. It totally reinforced the ideology of our team. There are 3 main concepts in this book, and they now hang as posters within our workspace. Here is the content of each (minus the cheesy graphic I picked for each animal):

Spirit of the Squirrel:

MEANINGFUL WORK

Important

Leading to shared goals

Value-driven

Way of the Beaver:

IN CONTROL OF ACHIEVING THE GOAL

A playing field with clearly marked territory

Thoughts, feelings, needs, and dreams are respected, listened to, and acted upon

Able but challenged


Gift of the Goose:

CHEERING OTHERS ON

Active or passive, congratulations must be TRUE

No score, no game, and cheer the progress

e=mc2 - Enthusiasm equals mission times cash and congratulations

If you are participating in a team book club (or even if you're not), I highly recommend putting this book on your reading list. It's an easy read and relatively short. We are now trying to determine what book to read next. Any suggestions/recommendations are greatly appreciated. Gung Ho, friend.

Book Club Update: Lean Software Development

The team has completed it's second book, Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit and continues to benefit. Over the course of roughly eight weeks, we discussed a chapter a week with each team member facilitating at least one chapter.

After the first chapter, entitle "Eliminate Waste", we implemented a change to our weekly team status meeting. That meeting consists of 8 people and traditionally lasted one hour. During our discussion on how to eliminate waste, we decided to utilize a SharePoint Meeting Workspace to maintain a running agenda and trim the meeting to half an hour. This produced a financial savings for the business and has made the team meeting more productive. We calculated the savings as follows:

8 people X 1/2 hour X 50 weeks X $70/hr (allocation rate)

for an annual savings of $14,000

We shared this information with our business sponsors and they

were very impressed with our initiative. They have attended one

of our meetings to see if they can replicate what we have done

throughout their teams. I am very impressed and proud of our

team for continually looking for ways to improve and learn.

Additionally, the team was so encouraged with the results from this book, that we've decided to continue. We will be reading Gung Ho! starting this month. I will provide an update upon completion. As I stated in a previous blog, I encourage every team to incorporate a mentality of continuous learning/improvement and start a book club.

Trip Report: TDWI Solution Summit: Master Data, Quality, and Governance

I just returned from the TDWI Solution Summit: Master Data, Quality, and Governance and have to say I came away impressed. This was a hosted event, with 100 attendees from a variety of industries. The presentations were high quality and there were no high-pressure sales pitches from the myriad of vendors that were present. The best presentations were the case studies from those in the trenches. Several IT leaders presented the solutions they had implemented in their organizations and the lessons learned along the way. One of the best presentations was on the Five Levels of MDM Maturity by Evan Levy of Baseline Consulting. It was very informative and will help with driving an MDM solution within our organization. Overall, the agenda, the presentations, and the venue were all top notch and very professionally run. I would recommend this summit to anyone currently implementing or envisioning an MDM solution.

Gartner AADI Trip Report

In December, I attended the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit in Las Vegas. This was my first Gartner conference, and I have to say I came away impressed. The quality of the presentations was excellent and the speakers were very polished. The main focus for me during the conference was Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), Master Data Management (MDM), and Business Process Management (BPM). I have been selling the benefits of SOA for some time and hope that after attending this event we are finally ready to start implementing.

What are we looking to gain from SOA? First, I'll paraphrase what Gartner defines as SOA. It's about how to design a system with an architectural style that is modular, distributable, discoverable, swappable, and shareable. Given that definition, we are looking to improve our agility through improved responsiveness to business changes and improved developer productivity. I'm excited about the opportunity to lead this initiative and anxious to get started. My vision is to start with a centralized team that will focus on governance, service portfolio management, development, and support. We will focus on data driven services as I believe that is where the most short-term value is and will help us move our MDM initiative along as well. The team will very quickly need to become more involved with our business leaders in order to provide long-term value providing services that actually meet business needs. Finally, once we have some core services available, BPM will become a much more viable option for our business users.

The possibility of enterprises services working on a core set of master data that is accessible with a variety of applications and business processes is an exciting opportunity that has me driven. I'll provide an update on how we're doing in a future blog. If you have experience in this area, or suggestions on where to start, please let me know.

New Site for Kanban Beginners

If you're looking for an introduction to Kanban, then you must check out Kanban101. This site provides an excellent introduction to Kanban terminology and concepts. It also compares Kanban and Scrum from a high-level perspective. The site does not provide a lot of detail, but if you are new to Kanban or just want a refresher on the basics, then it's for you.

Staff Book Club Update

The team has completed The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team and it was tremendously beneficial. Over the course of several weeks team morale, cooperation, and productivity has dramatically improved. The book was good overall, but I believe the most important part was the team involvement. We met twice a week with each team member facilitating at least 2 chapters over the course of the book. We had great discussions and wouldn't meet without the entire team present. If you lead a team, I strongly encourage you to start a book club and participate in it with your team.

Another one of the benefits, was the creation of a Team Mission Statement. This came up during the discussion of one of the chapters. We decided to create and publish one of our own. We solicited feedback from the team, received buy-in from our executive sponsor and came to consensus. The result's are now proudly displayed on the wall in each team members cubicle.

Finally, the team was so encouraged with the results from our first book, that we've decided to continue. We will be reading Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit starting in December. This is a relatively short read, 8 chapters, that we will finish after the first of the year due to holidays and vacations.

Team Mission Statement
"Leverage team insights, strengths, and competencies to deliver on-time, high-quality, cost effective solutions that provide increased and sustainable value to our business partners while supporting [Company]'s purpose, values, and vision."