The iRise Blog

Over on the iRise Users section of the Catalyze community, we’ve had an ongoing discussion thread where users have been displaying their creative side in the iRise Haiku Contest.

The exciting part of creating a great product is nurturing passionate users - passionate users who want to share their enthusiasm and knowledge with others.

I thought I’d share some of the haiku entries below:

Simulation done
A common path to follow
The fog is clearing

It, I simulate
To show the product behavior
They print the word doc

iRise is the key
For BA, UX success
Purchase it today

Who needs top-line growth?
iRise visualizes
Drives tranformation

Have an iRise haiku of your own to share? Leave a comment with your submission!

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It’s that time of year again; time to reflect on yet another year gone by.  It’s also time to make a set of prognostications for the coming year.  Maybe a “Top 10″ list of predictions for IT organizations in 2008 might be in order.

Number 10:  In financial services, the focus will shift back to cost savings.  Innovation is all well and good, but when large firms are posting multi-billion dollar losses due to the mortgage meltdown, is this one really that hard to predict?

Number 9:  Consolidation will continue in the software world.   Enough said.

Number 8:  New consumer gadgets and Web sites will drive design as a key competency.  It doesn’t matter where or how you build something anymore, it matters WHAT to build in the first place.  Have you looked at how the Boeing 787 is being built?

Number 7: Could this be the year that business analysts get the recognition they deserve?  All the CIOs I talk with consider the hiring of BAs as now mission-critical.  They’re also investing in certification, training and community programs.

Number 6: The CIO becomes a full fledged business executive.  There are no such things as IT projects anymore, just business projects.  The CIO needs to be technology savvy and have an in-depth knowledge of the business.

Number 5:  Global sourcing reaches a new level of complexity.  Off-shoring, on-shoring, near-shoring, blended models and the movement towards outsourced development (versus just support & maintenance) make global sourcing trickier than ever.  Where’s the secret sauce to guaranteeing results?    

Number 4:  Application definition moves out from underneath the shadow of requirements management.   See number 8. 

Number 3:  Security investments will continue to distract from competitive advantage (innovation).  With bad news coming in almost daily about lost laptops, stolen data and cyber attacks, security projects will take precedence over innovation.  Makes you wonder what we could do if there weren’t so many threats out there.  Is 2008 the year companies finally get the upper hand?

Number 2: The pendulum swings back to packaged applications.  With SOA support in full swing, more companies will try to get by with customized packaged applications.  Will competitive advantage suffer?   BTW: you still need to visualize business requirements when customizing packaged solutions…iRise can help.

Number 1:  “Transformation” replaces “innovation” as the buzzword of 2008.  Software is still the lifeblood of a competitive economy.  Yet the process of defining and producing software on time and on budget is still largely broken.  Just the same way that 3D modeling tools transformed whole industries such as automotive and aerospace, application simulation will begin to transform the people, processes and technology in the $500 billion global software market.

What are your thoughts?  Did I miss any big ones?   We can touch base at the end of 2008 to see how well I did…

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Tata Consultancy Services (an iRise Alliance Partner) released the results of their first annual global IT survey recently.  The biggest surprise was that business managers responded that they tend to accept IT problems as a norm and necessary evil. Would you?

Some of the survey highlights include:

• 62% had IT projects that failed to meet their schedules
• 49% suffered from budget overruns
• 47% had higher than expected maintenance costs
• 41% failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI

An interesting question looked at the reaction of business managers and the Board of Directors when IT projects have gone wrong:

The two noticeable differences between the US and Global results were that US Business Managers rarely look for an IT scapegoat and that they are less apt to accept problems as norm and necessary evil.  They are also more likely to continue to provide support to improve IT for the business.

Personally, I find the results troubling and like to see some organizations challenging the norm with new and innovative ideas. Some choose visualization as a critical element of communication to prevent these failures. See some examples here.

TCS is working with iRise to mitigate risks on IT projects. As Vipul Shah, Manager R&D at TCS, put it, “Software development is an inherently complex process faced with the risks of miscommunication and the potential loss of control.  iRise helps TCS mitigate these risks by visually simulating and validating requirements before development even begins. This strengthens the scope of our engagements and ensures the solutions and services we deliver to our clients are exactly as intended.”

The survey was conducted among 800 global mid-level and senior IT staff (23% of them from the US).  You can read more about the survey and download detailed results from this link.

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Investing in better design has always been a tough sell to non-believers, in part because there aren’t enough clear and easy ways to show different levels of design attention.  Here is one method I have used recently:

This chart shows the adoptability of a product based on where it sits on a continuum from Functional to Usable to Desirable.  Rough descriptions of each are:

• Functional = A user can finish what someone could describe as a functional task but doesn’t necessarily meet their needs or goals as a user.
• Usable = A user can meet needs and goals without frustration.
• Desirable = The satisfaction of needs and goals is done in such a way that a user builds a positive emotional association with the product (i.e. positive product equity).

Adoptability in the software world is a measure of whether or not people who have bought the product are actively using it.  In other words, is it used or is it shelfware?  Being used doesn’t just mean higher support costs… it means that a customer is actually getting value and associating that benefit with the product and the brand.

What this shows on the lower right side is that yes, there are software products that can be adopted that are almost purely functional if they provide a huge amount of relative value.  However, even if they are adopted in a temporary fashion, the negative product equity associated with them means that they are easily and enthusiastically displaced by competitors.  The dot shows a product that moves from no adoption, to adoption with negative product equity, to adoption with positive product equity.

Desirability Testing

One interesting implication of this is that software companies should do all three types of testing in order to drive the proper behavior in valuing each:  Functional Testing, Usability Testing, and Desirability Testing.  Desirability Testing doesn’t really yet exist in any formal sense, so this is a good area for further research and experimentation.

Product Equity

Product equity is like brand equity but focused just on the product and not the overall brand experience.  The impact of positive product equity is that customers will continue to use the product in the face of competitive alternatives and will buy additional products from the same vendor.

Are there other methods you have used or seen to meet the same goal of communicating different levels of design attention?

[This entry was originally posted to the blog The Product Architect on December 8, 2007.]

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S. Sadagopan who heads consulting and eBusiness for Satyam based in Santa Clara, California (and blogs here) recently wrote an opinion essay entitled “Meet the New CIO” for Sandhill.com.

He starts out by stating the obvious that “business demands are increasing”.  In the short term, CIOs need to worry about improving current business processes, controlling enterprise costs and raising workforce performance.   Longer term expectations are focused on new strategic capabilities that will use information to attract and retain customers and create new market opportunities.  These longer term expectations are pushing CIOs beyond their traditional roles and are targeted at improving growth, innovation and competitive advantage.

Are CIOs up to the task?  Probably not.  He backs this up by referencing a recent Gartner and Forbes magazine survey that found fewer than 50% of CEOs surveyed hold the CIO responsible for the strategic exploitation of information today.  And the need for innovation and change do not diminish in difficult economic times - which leads to a need for a new breed of leadership.

Ultimately it comes down to balancing supply and demand where supply is the delivery of resources and services to support business functions vs. the demand of helping businesses innovate through better use of technology.  As Mr. Sadagopan says, “while every CIO plans to align IT and business strategy, the irony is that they don’t have enough time for effective strategic planning.”

What’s Next?  Mr. Sadagopan says that successful CIOs and organizations will:

• Develop (or rebuild) the credibility of the IT organization quickly
• Reposition IT as a “competitive necessity” and connect information and IT capabilities with the company’s strategies and goals
• Influence the perceptions of other members of the senior management team

Mr. Sadagopan also points out that the “CIO of the future will likely spend one-third of his efforts on operational excellence, one-third on transformational efforts and one-third on innovation and business competitiveness.”

If you’re a CIO - where are you spending your time today?

He ended with this admonition, “successful CIOs – and their vendors – must understand and embrace the dramatic evolution of the technology leadership role in order to remain a productive part of enterprise management”.  He also provided a list of CIO imperatives and here are just a few of my favorites:

• Drive competitive advantage through innovation
• Nurture ideas that challenge conventional wisdom
• Create separate IT organizations to focus on the supply and the demand side
• Lead business change

Read the complete essay for all of the details at Sandhill.com.

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