We have known for some time that the video gaming industry is leading significant innovation trends in the software and hardware industry.  I stumbled upon this Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today (from January 2011)  that documents what the gaming industry has brought to defense, collaboration and even the entertainment industry.  I think that one of the biggest innovations brought to us by the video game industry that has yet to be untapped is the Microsoft Kinect.

If you have no idea what a Kinect is let me spend a few seconds bringing you up to speed.  The Kinect is basically a motion detector, voice recognition and camera all built into a device that allows for deviceless control of your xBox.  Meaning that you don’t need a remote to control a game, play a movie, etc. 

Cool I know, that’s why I bought one.  However, not for the reason you might expect.  I purchased it for the kids.  My kids are young.  Handling a controller would be impossible and I shuttered in fear at them using something like a Wii.  Although flat screens have come down in price I don’t have a desire to replace mine once a year because a controller went through the screen.  However, there are some really great educational games out there and I thought that during the 110 degree Texas heat this might be a good change up.  I must admit that I was a bit skeptical at first.  These things never work as advertised.  But it did.  And it worked well.

Fast forward six months.  As any self respecting geek I started to wonder what if.  Microsoft at the time wasn’t allowing much if any customization, but now it appears that the flood gates have opened.  People are beginning to put the device into action.  And now, you don’t need an xBox!

So what is it being used for?  The video below will give you a preview:

Cool huh?  You would be right to stop right there and imagine the possibilities.  However, I came across this next gem.  It’s six minutes long, but I assure you it’s worth your time.

This video highlights two big innovations with real commercial potential.  One is the the virtual content and integrations via a pointing device (read your iPad or phone).  Secondly was the in the last part.  The virtual partial interaction with real world objects (the desk/drawer/garbage can).

So what does this mean?  Simple, no need to carry a laptop or in some cases any device.  Because of the Kinect your apps can go with you anywhere this system is in place.  Your digital life, apps, etc are in the cloud.  Innovation and collaboration anywhere, anytime.  You now become the device.  The technology is just a platform to display it.  No need for keyboards, mice, monitors, etc.  Exciting times for sure!

If you would like to learn more, or even get funded by Microsoft for developing a great idea I would recommend checking out the Kinect Accelerator page.

Just in case you haven’t noticed the explosion of devices and consumer based applications is beginning to challenge IT departments.  Do you allow your employees to use their own devices?  What about applications?  How do you deploy and manage security?  These are all questions that just about every IT shop in the world is having to answer.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a multi billion dollar conglomerate or supporting the local church.  The consumerization of IT is here, and I predict here to stay. 

The question of managing this phenomenon is not if you should allow it.  That battle has already been fought.  Devices and applications are being used because they are convenient or introduce efficiencies.  You cannot stop this wave.  Imagine being the head of a pager company and you just saw your first cell phone in action.  You need to start making cell phones, not scoff at the idea that cell phones will never catch on!  The real question is how do you take advantage of this movement.

Make no mistake, this is a paradigm changer and you need to think of ways to take advantage of this.  So what in the world am I talking about?  I remember when I first started working in the 90’s.  You hardly ever saw a laptop.  They were reserved for the ‘high-ups’.  They were cool and a status symbol.  Fast forward 10 years and now all you see is laptops.  They are now the standard of a productive work culture allowing people to work from anywhere, and unfortunately for this guy, at anytime of the day or night.  Laptops stopped being a status symbol and the hallmark of productivity.   They changed the paradigm. 

Today we have devices and applications that take full advantage of sleek form factors and the cloud.  Paradigm changer?  No doubt.  I, myself, own 3 laptops and two iPads.  I have the ability to work from anywhere and at anytime.  Couple that with some slick collaboration apps like Lync, Skype, Facetime and a host of other cloud based collaboration utilities there is no need for me to go into the office.  So why do we continue to build applications, corporate infrastructures and offices like it’s the 1990’s?  Do I really need a cube, an office or a desk phone?  No, what I need is a power strip. 

So what is the next model?  The next laptop transformation?  First, I think IT needs to look at how we allocate IT assets.  Why buy me a laptop?  I have three.  And they are far superior to the one you will probably provide me.  Why not give me a stipend so I can purchase my own equipment?  Why not give me a stipend for being an employee?  Chances are if you are like me you even dislike the office supplies!  I’ll buy my own pens and paper! 

Imagine how that would change the way you not only build out an office, but your approach to building business solutions!  Your external customers and internal customers become one in the same. All rely on the ability to use your product anytime and anywhere.

Agile is an incredible methodology for running IT projects.  However, at times you are asked to come up with a swag as to how much money and resources it will take to complete a project.  Modeling the complexities of resource requirements, time and expense can be difficult.  I recently put together a spreadsheet to assist in this activity.  I had every intention of moving this to an online application, but do to time constraints I have not had the time.  So I’ve decided to release this tool in, gasp!, Excel.  Please feel free to use as is, but if you beat me to creating an online tool at least put a link back to my blog!

First, a quick explanation of how the tool works:

Only edit the light blue fields

1.  
   1.  
      1. Story Points Total – Total story points the team estimated for the entire project
      2. Time Frame (Months) – Sometimes the business expects that a project needs to be completed in a timeframe.  This cell allows you to calculate that.  The warning here is that you need to be realistic.  9 pregnant women can’t have a baby in a month.  If you don’t understand that statement than you need to cease and assist the use of this tool immediately!  Advice:  Just be realistic.
      3. Blended Resource Rate – The blended rate of all available or projected resources.
      4. Contingency – This is a swag.  Enter a % of ‘play money’ to each side.
      5. Story points conversion – Agile purists hate this.  But in some situations you have to convert a story point into an hour estimation.  This field allows you to estimate time to quote.  More importantly it allows you to model scenarios.
      6. Headcount – The Dev line item is automatically calculated.   Remember, you are trying to back into the number of developers you’ll need and the amount of money you will need to complete the project.  Developers are the big unknown.  Other resources are fixed or can be calculated as a ratio (i.e. One QA professional per 3 Dev’s).   Again, this also allows you to model resources needed to manage the number of dev’s you are calculating.   Add your PM’s, Scrum Masters, QA people here.
      7. Capital Hardware – It costs money to run this new stuff.  Add your costs here.
The three columns related to cost and number of resources models out the amount of dedicated resources.  Dedication is an estimate.  Your resources will go to meetings, use the bathroom, etc.  One thing I will guarantee you, they will not be productive 100% of the time.  I’ve found that the team is productive between 80 and 70% of the time allocated.  Use these columns to provide a range.

Download the file here

I regularly get asked by people just entering or interested in the Technology field what my best advise to a budding technologist would be.  I hate that question.  There is so much to know and so many experiences to share.  How do you boil that down to one elevator pitch?  Someone queue the music: I’ve given a ton of horrible advice.

I’m pretty sure that to most of those outside of our industry pride of ownership is a good thing.  Society encourages people to buy houses, start businesses, etc. All thinking that this will lift the community because people have a ‘pride in ownership’.  In other words, because they own something they will continue to invest in it to make their property better. 

However, I believe, that pride of ownership in our industry is toxic.  I have noticed over the years that pride of ownership in technology leads to two things, terrible product delivery and stunted innovation.  Product delivery constantly fails because your developers are taking liberty with the code.  They are going to try to pay back some technical debt because they think or *know* that if they just had another ‘crack’ at that function or class they could improve it.  Stunted Innovation occurs for much the same reason.  Why look at other technologies?  Your team or yourself is completely engaged in the current paradigm.  If you change you kill your baby.

There is no doubt that the technology team plays an integral part in creating value for the organization.  As I’ve blogged before this is what IT’s value proposition is.  However, as a technologist, you need to realize that the product you created is the product of Technology, Marking, Sales and Customers coming together. Also known as business value.  The technology doesn’t belong to you.  It belongs to the organization. This is the difference between great companies and great failures.

Sounds harsh?  I mean your or your team created the product? But it didn’t.  The product was a successful implementation of the businesses needs.   To put it simply, You were the doctor in the delivery room.  There were a cast of others that had the same level of commitment and smarts to help give birth to the product.  I think I can speak for most of us when I say just be thankful that we walk out with clean shoes!

If, as an organization, you think that you have a pride of ownership issue please feel free to contact me. Once you are free it’s the most liberating and enabling existence of IT. I’m happy to evangelize. 

I’m not typically a person that takes issue with someone or some else’s post on my blog.  I’m of the opinion that blogs are there to put forth your ideas.  However, I happened across two posts today, one that references the other. One I disagree with and another I agree with and have more to add.  The one I disagree with is not out of spite, but I think it perpetuates some false assertions that, can and do, hinder the progress of something both the author and I strongly hold true.  The articles I reviewed were Introducing New Technology in Agile by Paritosh Ranjan and 5 Reasons NOT to choose a Technology by Ellyssa Kroski.

The first point that caught my eye on Ranjan’s article was the generalizations about Agile. 

Generally Agile projects are of very short durations. So, introducing new technologies in such a small time frame is always risky.

I will first start off by saying I can’t qualify what a long duration is.  My assumption is that a short duration is less than a year.  I would argue that Agile is exactly the methodology for introducing a new technology.  Agile, in principle, is setup to manage just that, risk. 

The second point Ranjan points out about Agile is that:

In Agile, the team size is pretty small, so if only one person keeps working on the new technology, then the team becomes dependent on him. While pair programming the knowledge about the new technology also distributes in the team and the team has a balanced truck number.

I don't mean to be awkward here but we are talking about two birds of the same flock.

And then there is this:

Most popular open source solutions are extremely well documented and a variety of free and commercial technical support options are available. Due to the nature of community development, documentation and instructions are often written from a variety of viewpoints - creating well-rounded information, instruction and tutorials. In addition, open source projects can't hide usage techniques, due to the free availability of the code. Free technical support is often available in the form of mailing list or newsgroup discussions; nevertheless some background research, knowledge or experience is often required.

Look, I’m a huge fan of FOSS.  And make no mistake I’m a huge M$ fanboy (Another rant for sure BTW).  However, Ranjan’s uses this reasoning to start the argument.

I really like Ellyssa Kroski post.  I wish more people thought like this.  What I would add to the post is defiantly check the availability of talent.  Regional specialties is a real concern.  For example I live in the Dallas – Ft. Worth area.  You will find more Microsoft professionals in Dallas than Ft. Worth.  In Ft. Worth you will find more java folks or specialty IT (Ft Worth is has more manufacturing and Dallas has more ‘corporate headquarters’).  A theory I’m still working on btw.  I would love to see someone produce a demand heat map by city.

I received an interesting email the other day.  The link was to a Microsoft article announcing an upcoming release of a ‘Cloud Appliance’.  I spoke about how great this would be for the world of computing in a blog post back in February 2009.  I forwarded the article to the folks I work with in Server/Network and they lost their minds.  A system fully capable of abstracting hardware and software!

As someone who works in a heavily regulated industry, and rightfully so in my opinion, this is the best thing to come along since virtualization.  There is no one in my industry that doesn’t recognize the benefits of a cloud based architecture, but new regulations in Healthcare now dictate jail time for certain violations.  I’m less willing to take advantage of the architectural benefits and cost savings if I know there is a real risk of visiting a federal institution of time outs.  Long story short, I’m excited to see Microsoft enter this space. 

More from InformationWeek…

More for Microsoft’s Website…

I am going out on a limb here.  Technologist are not traditionally people persons.  Please insert your own Office Space quote [here].  Technology is a profession I love.  Make no mistake.  But, we have our issues.  The issues have nothing about capability or effectiveness.  We are very good at that providing solutions to problems.  Our problem is self promotion!

When thinking of traditional Technical Evangelists I believe most people picture someone that promotes a platform or a proprietary service such as the ones Microsoft and SUN have employed.  Currently, I believe that Steve Jobs is the best known evangelist given Apple’s recent product home runs.  However, I do believe there is an opportunity for smaller shops, or even your own company, to employ the same strategies to maximize technology value to customers.

I think at face value this makes sense, but just for fun let’s examine some everyday scenarios that support an evangelist position:

• The pace of innovation is increasing.  You need to be agile in your evaluation of new technologies and how your business can leverage them to deliver a step change competitive advantage.
  
• Your leadership team probably interacts less with technology less than your IT team does.  You need to continually bring new opportunities to the forefront at every chance.  Perhaps an evangelist should even be present during board meetings?  Can you imagine; IT being a strategic business partner???  I kid of course.  It’s what we should be!!!
  
• Your customers are becoming more tech savvy.  There are no more secrets in Technology.  They have access to the same vendors and solutions that everyone else does.  You need to put someone in front of them that can inspire them.  Leave the sales transaction up to the sales team, build interest and excitement for the product up to the evangelist.
  
• Building a product and selling it is just 30% of a launch (my take on it).  You need someone to continually look for ways to promote the product on a micro-interaction level.  Be it whitepapers, speaking at local groups or even through blogging and social network sites.
  
• Customers need to be ‘connected’ to the product to build loyalty and honest feedback.  Nothing makes your IT product more replaceable than a customer feeling like they have no feedback loop or someone they can identify with.  Did you notice the recent Microsoft commercials about ‘Windows being my idea’?

So how do you position the need for a product evangelist?  Moreover, how do you convince the ‘brass’ that one is needed?  My current employer does not formally recognize the role, however I believe that each leader in the IT organization informally plays the role.  I think a large part of that is due to the fact that our IT department is viewed as a strategic partner in business decisions and efforts.  For many organizations that’s a tough road to pave.  I’m admittedly lucky.

Those of you seeking to build a case for implementing an evangelist culture I would work to tie the five points above with specific plans or actions to address them.  Building legitimacy is key.  Challenge your current status quo by continuously providing competitive analysis and how you can overcome those challenges by bringing forth new technological advancements.  It’s a small step and the culture will not change overnight.  However, it’s a step in the right direction.  Remember, overnight success usually takes 3-7 years.  Even for Google!

I would be happy to read and repost any stories on how you successfully implemented an evangelist role or culture.  I think this is an important component of IT’s growth and I’m happy to share.

I think the recent comments by Steve Jobs have been well documented.  I don’t discount his evaluation of Flash.  It’s his opinion and it’s his company.  He should be able to do what he wants.  However, Job’s is putting a lot of money on one factor he has no control over.  Developers.  Dare I say that Steve Ballmer was right?  It’s Developer, Developers, Developers!

As a technologist I think it’s absolutely absurd to say that the adoption rate of HTML will be non-existent.  I wrote a Blog post back in January 2009 arguing that Silverlight would be adopted in spite of Flash.  I still feel the same holds true for HTML 5.  If you make an application ‘cool’ enough they will come.  I think that HTML 5 has real promise. 

The problem will be the adoption rate by developers.  Apple does not have enough market share to convince me to convert to HTML 5.  That doesn’t mean that it will not.  It just means that in the foreseeable future I have no plans to replace my Silverlight or Flash plugins by implementing HTML 5.  Completing an asp.net site will pretty much cost me as much as doing a Silverlight based site.  In fact, my UX guys will probably use Adobe Photoshop to do most of the images so including Flash probably won’t be that much either!

Secondly, I would argue that Apple is approaching a new phase in its life as a product company.  For the longest time Apple has enjoyed a dedicated following, otherwise known as ‘Fanboys’.  Remember your old art teacher in grade school with the Mac?  I bet he/she is still a rabid Mac fan.   Unfortunately Apple is beginning to appeal to the masses.  They are no longer a niche player in the world of computing.  I know countless Apple converts who until recently could only brag about the sleekness of Apple products.   Now  they complain about compatibility, battery life and gasp!, crashes and viruses. 

The point is that Apple will eventually need to cater to these new expectations and user base.  Even if only some of them.  They have a taste of success and they are going to want to keep it, if not for the sake of their shareholders.  At some point they may have to, and should, listen to their customer needs.  Including the support for Flash and Silverlight might be one of the many things they need to do.  It will be the converts that lead the growth for Apple not the current base of dedicated art teachers!

I’ve recently been reading a few articles about the future of application development and IT infrastructure management.  I believe that one of the main issues that face most IT pros is that we get caught up in the buzz word factory.  Today’s latest: Cloud computing, Web 3.0, etc.  What we fail to realize when we speak about the future of our architecture is the changing dynamic of our end users.

We, as a profession, need to realize that the end user is really what keeps us working.  It used to be that the goal of any application was to cater to the least common denominator, the weakest user.  If we could get that person to be productive and make less mistakes while using the software we wrote, then it was a success.  I believe that the paradigm has shifted.

I attend meetings every day where a user has created an application using Excel or Access.  Typically these applications have a degree of sophistication that amazes me given the lack of formal training and IT processes.  I’ve come to realize that most of the folks that work on these have ‘grown up’ in a technology enabled life.  I’m not just talking about 20 something's here.  The level of sophistication spans all generations.  For example, my father called me the other day to inform me that he updated his weather station so that it automatically FTP’s data to his website.  We are talking about a guy who no less than five years ago would ask me how to configure his email account. 

As a technologists we need to start thinking about embracing this trend.  We need to stop thinking about the lowest common denominator and begin thinking about how to enable users to ‘mash up’ or create their own technology solutions.  We can see this trend in BI trends. Analytic capabilities are being pushed to the end user.  No longer is a static report acceptable.  Users need and want the ability to drill through data, create their own reports and share with their peers.

Perhaps we, as technologists, need to re-explore the promise of SOA.  Not as core architecture, but a way for end users to plug-in, utilize the centralized logic and resources so they can leverage tools to make applications that work for them.

My advice for IT pros and lowest common denominator of users is the same: Adapt, or become obsolete.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of working with Microsoft’s 2008 BI stack. I say pleasure because Microsoft has really pulled out the stops.  The architecture is sound, the performance is outstanding.  Gartner has ranked Microsoft’s BI offering in the top quartile of providers.  This puts them in the same league as Cognos (Oracle), Business Objects (SAP) and usual players in the space.  I have used Cognos and Business Objects in the past and have had the opportunity to use or see most of the other vendor offerings.   Each Vendor offers tradeoffs.  Below is my experience with Microsoft’s BI solution up to this point.

Microsoft’s BI offering is centered around SQL Server.  In this case my team and I used Microsoft server 2008 and SQL Server Enterprise 2008.  I wish I could tell you it was because we wanted to take advantage of the performance improvements, However our logic was simpler.  If you’re going to build a new stack just use the latest and greatest.  The most important thing to the team was to use SQL Server 2008 so that we could take advantage of what R2 was going to provide.

The first thing that really struck us was the modular nature of Microsoft’s strategy.  SQL Server is the core, but in terms of delivery Microsoft relies heavily on the fact that most business users utilize Microsoft Office as their main office productivity suite.  It’s a safe bet considering that Microsoft has an incredible penetration rate in this space.  However, external facing customers might prove to be challenging in terms of delivery.  We chose to put a proxy between our Reporting Services implementation and the outside world.  This allowed us to implement URL rewriting and offer another level of security.  Unlike Cognos, which offers an easy to implement portlet we had to custom make a solution for implementation into our ALUI portal engine.  Of course all of this can be solved if you just use Microsoft Share Point.  This was not an option for us.

Typically I’d view this module nature as being a hindrance, or even a lack of integration features.  What we ended up finding is this is actually a strength of the Microsoft BI stack.  Microsoft has a great API/services to access all the functionality.   Building out a custom solution for integration was not that bad compared to the limited options for customization that other vendors offer.  For example, Users can natively access cubes and analysis right from Excel 2007.  However, because the API was so rich, we chose to write our own ‘Excel tab’ to make accessing and running analysis functions as brain dead as possible.  A solution that users appreciate.

So far, as a strategic play, Microsoft’s BI offering is proving to be a good investment.