This week in links - week 19, 2008

"Alfresco's Social Computing Slant Shows ECM's Evolution" by George Dearing:

"I had an interesting discussion with John Newton, the co-founder of Alfresco, recently...//...Newton makes everything sound so damn easy when he talks about enterprise content management. And when's the last time you heard the words 'easy' and 'ECM' in the same sentence?"

"If you take into account the way information increasingly lives inside and outside the firewall, ECM becomes even more complex. Companies now have to figure out how to consume and create content in both environments, something Newton says Alfresco accomplishes by adopting a 'content-as-service' approach. He argues that most enterprises lay out their palette of required services based on the need to create content. The focal point shouldn't be centered so much on the ECM suite, he argues. It has more to do with looking at 'how the Web browser can help knowledge workers do their jobs.'"

[Newton:]"'Content services should just be accessible wherever knowledge workers are. We shouldn't be forcing workers to go into these ECM suites. In our view, collaboration spans far more than ECM.' "

Hear, hear.

"E2.0 Fundamentals" by Jeremy Thomas:

"As Dion Hinchliffe says (and as I have written before), 'Discoverability isn’t an after thought , it’s the core'...//...Organizations need to embrace the fact that their data will be federated. Sure, workers will put their documents in “wiki X”, but they’ll also put them on the file share, in content management systems, and on email servers. Data that cannot be found is useless. Enterprise search will unlock data and increase the propensity for information (and the knowledge workers who create it) to be discovered. Discoverability leads to recognition, and recognition leads to increased participation. Enterprise 2.0 must be approached holistically."

Hear, hear. Again.

"Report says enterprise mashups on the rise" By C.G. Lynch, CIO.com:

"A new Forrester report says that enterprise mashups, while not yet a panacea for connecting all the dots of corporate data, will help companies (and their employees) mix and match information to help them do their jobs better. According to the researchers, vendors will provide tools for business users to build a mashup on their own with no programming experience."

"'Mashups are trying to solve a long-standing business problem, which is combining disparate data sources,' says Oliver Young, the Forrester analyst who wrote the report. 'We think mashups are doing it in a unique way that's more user-oriented.'...//... "It absolutely starts to look like BI,' Young says. 'Mashups will eat into that market.' Forrester defined a mashup in the enterprise as "custom applications that combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique."

The value of Enterprise RSS

I personally often argue for the potential that Enterprise RSS has for the purpose of improving decision making within an organization. The reasoning is as follows: By encouraging conversations between people in different initiatives and making them explicit as RSS feeds and by making it possible for anyone within the enterprise to tap into (subscribe to) these conversations and passively observe them, managers as well as any stakeholder can get valuable information to make better informed decisions, as well as getting signals about things starting to happen and react on them before it is to late.

When I manage a project, I usually ask each member in my project to write a diary (either as text stored stored in a document or send via an e-mail) about what they have been doing, what they are currently doing and what issues and risks they see. This way I have been able to stay on top of things and resolve issues before they become real problems. I also get information telling me if we are on schedule or not. The problem has been that these diaries have been hard to access and that anyone who wanted to read them had to actively look for them on a file share or in their inboxes. As a result, the only one who have read them has been me. Occasionally. I have also had to remind and motivate each and everyone to write their diaries, which is hard to do when they know that the only one who is reading their diaries is me. Hopefully.

But things are changing as technologies such as blogs and RSS are becoming more common even for enterprise use. With a project blog which every project member can contribute to and an RSS-feed that all stakeholders can subscribe to, the whole process of informing each other within a project as well as informing externa stakeholders becomes so much more simple and powerful. When the effort to inform yourself is small enough, then you find it worthwile. The value is simply so much higher than the cost. When that happens, then you also see a value of sharing information with others. If you know that someone reads what you are writing, then you get the motivation needed to continute writing. And then it becomes a positive spiral.

In the post "How Corporate RSS Supports Collaboration and Innovation", Dennis McDonald advises his readers to read the post "RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise" by corporate IT manager Jim MacLennan. So I did and here is an excerpt:

"We added RSS capabilities to our internal PMO systems this past month, and traffic & content is already building up to become a valuable resource. Some have [correctly] noted that this increased visibility puts a bit more pressure on project managers and team members, to keep updating project blogs with pertinent information. This "time shifting" of communication should develop into the most effective way to let the rest of IT know what is happening in all areas"

"These spontaneous, organic, and very impactful "conversations", between people still experimenting with a new technology, show me real potential for spontaneous innovation and idea sharing. More evidence of the value of [judicious] experimentation with new technology - no silver bullet, but just enough spark to start a few fires."

Dennis McDonald makes a summary of Jim MacLennans findings:

• "RSS feeds make it easier for people to kee up with what a lot of different projects are up to.

  This has led to better communication as well as innovation.

  Email is still the most ingrained communication platform.

  Upper management still expects PowerPoints for reporting purposes."

He then continues by addressing the problem to quantify the costs and benefits of Enterprise RSS:

"Simply put, a generally available RSS feed creation and subscription capability can increase the number of projects any one person can remain abreast of for the expenditure of a given unit of time — just as it can increase the total amount of time a person devotes overall to managing — and responding to — the monitored RSS feeds."

"Granted, taking such a quantitative view does not tell the whole story about what might be gained by making RSS subscription features generally available across projects and the people they interact with. There’s no way to predict, for example, when an innovation or improvement will occur as a result of a communication that might not have otherwise taken place."

"That’s a disadvantage of taking a “beancounter” approach to implementing social media within an organization. While you might be able to quantify the time, effort, and technology associated with impacted processes, you can’t necessarily predict when and where the benefits (such as innovations or new ideas) will occur."

If you want to know more about Enterprise RSS, the ChiefTech blog by James Dellow is a good starting point.

Information Management Principle #1: Information cannot be managed

This is the first in a series of posts where I will address a number of important principles for information management. If you let your information management strategy rest on these principles, it is much more likely that you will identify the real information management challenges that your organization is facing and to address them in the right wat. In short, it will make sure that you focus on the information needs of people and avoid getting lost in the technology swamp.

Principle #1: Information cannot be managed

The discipline of Information Management is often confused with the disciplines of Content Management and Data Management. I believe this happens because key concepts such as knowledge, information, content and data have not been properly defined or used in a consistent manner. The terms representing these concepts are often used as if they are synonyms and thus interchangeable. The result can be that important questions are not addressed, at least not in the right way. Here are definitions of the concepts mentioned above:

• Data is content that has been structured so hard (in order to be stored and accessed in an efficient way) that it does not provide enough of context to be usable on its own. It needs to be aggregated, formatted and described to be usable.
  
• Content is something that is indented to communicate a message (information, something about something) from a sender to one or several receivers e.g. a diagram, document, picture or movie. The purpose of the message (e.g. the communication process) can be to inform the receiver about something and/or to create an experience. Digital content is formatted and described in a way that it can easily be managed and delivered to the receiver by means of information technology – over time and space.
  
• When perceiving and interpreting content which is intended to inform the receiver about something, the receiver will hopefully “get the message”. In other words, the content is transformed into meaningful information by cognitive processes in the receiver's head.
  
• When the receiver reflects and applies the information, it can be transformed into knowledge.

What these definitions tell us is that data and content can be managed with the means of (information) technology, but that we cannot manage information and knowledge with technology. This is because information and knowledge exist only in our own heads. What we can do however is to try to conceptualize what we know and encoded it into content - text, images, sound and video. We can also try to identify the intended receivers and make the content available to them. But we cannot guarantee that they will understand what we are trying to say to them or that they will act as we want them to even if they do understand. We can only hope that they get our message and that it is persuasive enough and that they have the motivation required to act as we want them to.

Acknowledging that information and knowledge cannot be managed with technology is important if we want to support people so that they share their information and knowledge with each other. First of all, it allows us to focus on what we actually can manage by means of technology; how to manage various forms of content and how that content is then made accessible to the right user in an efficient way. Secodly, it tells us that we must focus more on creating an environment which encourages people to share information and knowledge with each other and help them develop their communication skills.

This week in links - week 18, 2008

"Of shoes and money …. and information" by JP Rangaswami:

"...mysteriously, we somehow manage to create an environment where we jealously guard information; where we seek to create and extend power as a result of this jealous guarding; where we then exploit this power in all kinds of ways, some less abhorrent than others (but all abhorrent, at least to me)...//...Once we impute value to information, we create a reason for people to have secrets. To hide things.And then it’s a downward spiral."

"The costs of reproduction and transmission and storage have dropped remarkably, and that changes many things...//...But there is a bigger change. A change brought about by the digital world. Now we can archive and retrieve information, search and find it. This has never happened before. And it is huge...//...Information is changing. And it is becoming more valuable to us all by becoming less valuable to any one of us."

"We should concentrate on providing good service and good product, concentrate on providing that service honestly and diligently. And the money will flow. Not by hoarding information, but by freeing it up. Collaborating with each other, within the firm, with our customers, with our partners, with our markets. Even with our competitors"

"Why IT Might Be in Big Trouble — Again" by Mark Smith:

" My assessment might be a little harsh, but my experience in the last six years analyzing organizations across all industries and company sizes provides insight to a serious problem. IT has lost touch with reality as they have been disconnected from the situation in business and do not seem to be concerned about it. My last blog pointed to the state of business being mad as hell. IT is apparently responding by shifting focus to the management of an organization's data assets rather than worrying or focused about the capabilities needed by business."

"How do you know if you are on a good path in IT and ensuring you are delivering value to business and your IT organization? Make sure you have well-defined objectives that can link to business and, just as importantly, to the information and interaction with it across the enterprise. Remember that good management of data assets in a cost-effective manner is one small component of the BI and information management issues in the enterprise."

Finally, in the post"What Type of Meeting is This?" Michael Sampson reviews four types of meetings where it can be better to meet in other ways than in-person.

The foundation for SOA

I have previously addressed "Why EIM is needed for SOA - and vice versa". Eric Roch shares a few experiences which stress the importance of information management to provide a proper foundation for SOA:

SOA really involves a lot of blocking and tackling for IT shops full of heterogeneous systems that must be integrated and disparate data stores that have accumulated over the years. Rationalizing legacy systems and cleaning up data is too much like the old IT grid and it is tempting to put a SOA Band-Aid on top and hope for the best. The problem is the Band-Aid comes off and the festering mess shows through the best of top-down designs.

I have been fortunate to work on many successful SOA engagements that have spanned several years using SOA for integration and information management as a foundation for business process automation and innovation. I have worked with colleagues and experts in the data management field to build a solid information foundation for SOA and seen SOA grow at companies from the ground up – from legacy systems and data up to the presentation layer.