OK, we all know that the world of business process improvement has been around forever and is resplendent with impressing sounding acronyms and terminology that is supposed to help us identify with these efforts, as the new path to process perfection.  We’ve all heard them in some form or fashion, terms like:

• Six Sigma Process Engineering
• Business Process Reengineering/Redesign (BPR)
• Lean Thinking/Process Design
• 5S
• Re-Engineering
• Seven Wastes
• Theory of Constraints (TOC)
• SMED
• ISO 9000 Quality Standards
• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• Toyota Production System (TPS)
• Just-In-Time (JIT)
• Benchmarking
• Plain old Continuous Improvement (CI)
• , etc, etc, etc

There is no doubt that getting together a dedicated group of knowledgeable, motivated professionals, sticking them in a room with an “expert” facilitator from a reputable consulting firm, and employing good process evaluation and analysis tools, will produce lots of swim lanes, good ideas, and a bevy of recommended process changes.  Sometimes, it only takes a single small business owner or general manager, using some good old fashion common sense, but the result is often the same, a new vision of “how it could be”.  The vision is usually a new and better way to doing whatever they do, BUT (you knew that was coming) it so often falls short of being actually built and implemented. 

Sure, there is always a few bites of “low hanging fruit” that impatient execs want you to grab right now, but only in rare occasions and after months of begging for funding, and years of working through the traditional IT quicksand, do these teams produce the real, transformational change that the effort promised at the start.  And even if you get IT to help you build the tools, according to The Standish Group’s report, “CHAOS Summary 2009,only 32% of IT projects were successful.   So why is this so hard, and are there any better methods.  The answer, YES!  So read on weary traveler…

Just Like process improvement there are all kinds of “methods” for developing software from the traditional waterfall model , to the many forms of the more modern AGILE method, such as: Scrum (1995), Crystal Clear, Extreme Programming (1996), Adaptive Software Development, Feature Driven Development, and Dynamic Systems Development Method(DSDM) (1995). These typically are referred to as Agile Methodologies since the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001.

But now in the dawning age of Cloud computing, we can use a good Platform as a Service (PaaS), to help provide a standard Infrastructure, a standard database schema, a standard (albeit flexible) GUI environment to really jump start the whole process.

Enter the PDM, yes another acronym sorry….so why is this any different?, why now ?, how does it work,?  All good questions, so let’s try to answer them in brief here, and then let’s dive deeper in the future as we  put this method to the test in real world situations, working with SME application development from scratch at MCF Technology Solutions, to see if it holds water!

So we have been doing a ton of these, quick hit, custom business process development application for business small and HUGE, and we wanted to be AGILE, since we believe in the core principles of collaboration, small cycles, etc.  The PDM arose from those humble beginnings as we struggled to get more efficient, quicker, more on target with our costs and above all else better results for our customers.   So without further ado, here are the basics of our model. 

The “P” in the name represents Parallel, why because we have found that if our development is fast enough, ala PaaS combined with about 6 years of world class experience in say Intuit’s QuickBase Platform, Wolf Frameworks, or Work Xpress, etc ., we can truly do the Process Improvement, using all the methods at our disposal (we like Lean and parts of six-sigma the best) with the client, Informed by the capabilities of the Platform to help shape the software tools that will be needed to support the new process.. they are all Defined, Designed and Refined in a collaborative and Parallel “Dance” with everyone working week to week, in small focused efforts (there is the AGILE part creeping in).    One big difference with AGILE is that we have become so consistent with our costs and timeline estimates, we can Fix Bid projects, where AGILE usually works best when you convince the client that they should trust the method and that time and materials will be cheaper in the end… sure, sometimes it does work out that way, but why not provide the security of a fixed bid, when it can be very statistically accurate to the actual time and materials that will be spent.  So there we have it,, Define, Design, Refine, and Implement… there are a couple of other more granular levels but here is the basic process from end to end.  In this blog I am providing an overview and then throughout the series I am going to dive deeper into each session, so here goes:

PDM OVERVIEW

Kick-off

This step is pretty straight forward and is usually a meeting event, but we do want to make sure that both sides have their teams defined, understand the scope of the project that is pre-defined, and most importantly understand their “Parallel” roles in the PDM process.  The key is that both the Development Team and the Process Team (including the Customer Side) will be working on specific, parallel responsibilities throughout the process and there should be no ambiguity as to what is expected and needed for success. 

Define

This is the foundation of our PDM house (we often use the House analogy to help our customers relate to the iterative but progressing nature of the PDM…. the foundation is the Data Entity Map.  My colleague Govind Davis, has just recently published an excellent blog on this subject at, http://www.mcftech.com/blog/139-simple-data-entity-modeling, so I won’t be redundant, but I do recommend you go read this, especially if you are intrigued enough to try this.

Design

This is where the house gets framed in , roof put on, drywall, and basic fixtures,, Here is where we engage with the customer in a series of Discussion to either understand or co-design their new process, all the while being informed by the capabilities of the PaaS to provide support for that process.  Typical Flow Charts help capture the core processes and workflows,  but also help define details such as the logic behind auto-status, or financial rules, etc.   The key to success is not to dwell on this too long before you start programming… as soon as you have a handle on one workflow, prototype development begins.  In parallel with additional discovery and design of course.

Prototype

This is where you have the house pretty much built and its time to start moving in and decorating.  Here the basic application is built and working to support the process from the Design phase.  At this point we are about half way done with a typical project.  This is also where the new owners need to start moving in.   Data must be migrated into the new structure, depending upon the original data this can be easy and fast or require a lot of manual entry.  Either way this is critical, so that as they start to use the application there is data there to support training.

Testing

Starting with a User test drive for each major role, this is a critical step to making the switch from a developer lead project to client lead.  This is important because the client must now begin to plan and execute the implementation.  This includes a health dose of Organizational Change Management, getting key influencers in each role to both engage and develop ownership in the new process/application, but also to influence the greater organization to adopt the new tools and methods as a positive change.  Testing is really dependant on the customer using the new application and providing the essential feedback to finalize the development.

BETA

OK, the house is done, walls are painted, fixtures are all bright and shiny, it just needs furniture and landscaping and it will be ready for the housewarming party.  This is where the final touches to the user experience, as defined during the testing in collaboration with the customer, are built…standard reporting, and dashboards for each role are typical examples. 

Implementation

Moving in party!  The work is not over for the client, there may be training to do for various user groups, a cutover plan must be in place and executed.  This is often the end of the line for the development team, but really it’s the beginning for the new homeowners, and anything you can do to help them settle in will be worth it, as their appreciation and follow-on business will attest.

Stay tuned as next week we will dive deep into the Design Phase.

PaaStor Mike

I love my job.  I always used to think, what if I had not become an engineer, or business manager, working with cold things, driving efficiency (sure I love building better mousetraps, but usually headcount was reduced as a result when your in a company like American Greetings that is slowly shrinking) – what if I could have helped people with the same intelligence, passion and conviction?   Since joining MCF Technology Solutions and discovering the power of Cloud Computing, I really dont have to wonder that anymore.  Why?  Simple, we help people everyday!  We help small business owners who are struggling with 1950′s processes and good old Excel as their only software tool, we literally help save businesses, jobs.  My favorite is when someone comes to us, kinda down, so buried in work trying to keep up each day, they can barely take an hour to talk about improving things, especially when they just cannot handle their potential growth and they know they could fly if only they could unbind their wings….. then after 6 weeks or so we are done;  they are so positive and thankful about thier new process/tools and ready to take on the world again.  I love that, and the fact that it happens 90+% of the time.

So back to the dynamic duo of QuickBooks and QuickBase….

QuickBooks has been around for sometime, I think its safe to say its the top software of its kind for small business in the U.S.   Many versions are available up to and including the Enterprise Edition 2010 and the newer QBOL QuickBooks Online product, so many of you have heard about it, as a pretty capable, albeit basic, general accounting package to help small businesses manage their finances, AR, AP, P.O’s, Invoices, T&E,etc… it does also provide the means to also manage your customers, vendors and even your inventory although those are not its core purpose.    OK, so its #1 for the SB arena, but then what?  Well it does have its limitations.  Getting the your critical business date into QuickBooks can be quite a task, most people have forms or Excel spreadsheets that they use to gather data then someone has the task of keying the data into QuickBooks for accounting purposes.  Thats data in, we often see poeple also exporting data to spreadsheets to try to sync up their business processes with QuickBooks, like keeping your inventory in sync with your order system, or keeping up your customers in your Sales spreadsheet, etc, etc, etc.

So now, along comes QuickBase, catchy name huh?, by the same company that brought us QuickBooks.  As an Online Database, or more accurately, a Platform as a Service (PaaS), QuickBase is a powerful, flexible toolkit that allows businesses to manage virtually any of their business processes and replace the spreadsheet as a means to collect and share critical data within a business.  The best part about it is that it is Online, allowing everyone in your application to view and edit the data in real time – I cannot stress enough the value of having your whole organization “on the same sheet of music” – I have never seen it hurt a process to allow everyone to have the same, fresh, data at all times…. So, how do these two Quick products play together?

Natively, not that well….. but there is hope,,, both products have a ton of differences ,right down to the way they index data, but fortunately the gurus at Intuit did leave open some doors to allow the two to integrate.  The integration usually needs some professional IT help to establish and can come in various flavors.   As we canvas the marketplace and talk to various QuickBooks consultants, we have seen both  local .Net integrations and more recently online, ETL  driven connections.  So big deal right?

Yes it can be a Huge deal for a company, its productivity and ultimately its ability to manage itself profitably.  Once you get your business processes using QuickBase, then feeding your financial data in/out of QuickBooks,  the value to the business literally gets multiplied.   A quick example we use to get this point across takes a small, project based company, with agents in the field doing projects for clients around the country.  Weekly they have to submit their T&E sheets, we can all relate to emailing spreadsheets around as our only way to share data (not anymore!) - anyway back to the example…. after the agents mail it in,  a manager reviews it (or first an assistant puts them all in another Big spreadsheet LOL, you know what I’m talking about), approves it, then emails it to accounting, who enters it into QuickBooks so that they can invoice the customer. BUT Wait, remember that time they made a keying error and the big customer was really pissed off???  sure thats why now, they output a report into a Spreadsheet of course, and email it back to the field agents, so that they can verify its accuracy….oh, that will catch all the errors right, send it to the originator so they can take the heat if its wrong – is this a healthy, motivating process or what?…. anyway once they check it, the email it back (step 7 or 8 for those of you who are counting) and then finally, Accounting gets to tell QuickBooks to send the invoice…… 9 steps, and that is IF everything is right the first time.

In contrast picture this better world>…. the field puts in the T&E in QuickBase’s online tool, the manager sees it in realtime on his “to review” list (no one is consolidating), reviews the data, checks approved – the system flawlessly puts the info into QuickBooks and invoice is emailed to the customer.  WOW… now I hope you see the value I am talking about.  

To boot, the speed of the new process has its own benefits to cash flow AND best of all, we have NO REDUNDANT DATA ENTRY – No re-entry ERRORS.   YaaHoo!!, is the usual response from our customers when this “dynamic duo” is allowed to work together.   Yes, like peanut butter and chocolate, these two tools can taste great together.

To find a qualified partner to help set you up with this powerful combination, you can call on us at MCFTech.com, or call the QuickBase Sales support line from their website at www.quickbase.com and they can recommend one of their solution providers.

First understand that putting “aaS” behind any letter pretty much means    <something> as-a-Service.. which is a good clue that someone is going to deliver this via the internet (ie. the Cloud)  and likely they will periodically send you a bill… and Yes I do realize what that looks like, no wise cracks please.

Back to the big picture O’ the cloud.  Here is what Govind wrote in his “Tech Wise” blog:

“Cloud services tend to fit into the category of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) or IaaS(Infrastructure-as-a-Service), each one delivering a service that encompasses the stack components below.  So, IaaS provides everything needed for server operation so that customers don’t have to set-up their own server operation, hardware and server connectivity, (translation: so on the bottom layer of the Cloud cake, there is all the fibre optics, high powered computers (servers)  made by Intel, AMD, Hitachi, Dell, IBM, HP, Apple,etc, etc, etc,)  PaaS adds a further layer of integrating providing the traditional server stack elements and installed code bases and databases as well as frequently layering on a codeless development environment. (translation: the Platform is a pre-set package deal that has everything you need to make web-based software tools, and often you do not have to be a programmer to get it to do what you want, kinda like Excel or better yet Access and File Maker Pro are for regular desktop users – big difference is that in the cloud, you don’t have to load anything on your PC AND everyone can share and collaborate with each other – thereby putting everyone on the same page and creating a TON of value, I digress).  And lastly SaaS delivers a complete application to end users via the browser with the rest of the cloud stack supporting it. (so its a ready made program, that usually does some specific job, that you run in your Browser, cause its web-based, nothing to program or configure, just learn to use it and youv’e got value.)

The Cloud Map

While this model seems very helpful in describing the rough layers of the cloud stack, there are is in fact a continuum of cloud services spanning from Iaas to Saas.  The key to understanding this continuum is to understand the trade-off between efficiency and flexibility of different requirements.  This cloud continuum is also helpful to understand why we see PaaS as an optimal tool for business process application development.  Most SaaS applications are too limited in scope and lack the flexibility to support an enterprise or even small business management application.  On the other hand just leveraging IaaS for application hosting does not yield the efficiency and cost benefits that SaaS delivers.  PaaS tools like QuickBase (www.quickbase.com), WorkXpress(www.workxpress.com) and Wolf Frameworks(www.wolfframeworks.com) , and the now defunct Coghead (that was purchased by SAP in the spring)allow for flexibility and customization of applications at rapid speeds and low costs.  

Its the customization that is important to understand here… this is not the traditional “CUSTOMIZATION” that conjures up seven figure price tags for Oracle or SAP installations, no this is the good kind;  Like getting the formula in Excel just right to give you the answer you need.   Flexibility means that you can get exactly what you want, your specific lingo and all – allowing all of us to shed that old notion that somehow the software designers know our business better than we do -  BS I say.  or should that be BK since we can now “‘have it our way” and not break the bank.   I love it when our clients say, I really wish we could call that a “Price List” instead of a “Contract”, then they look up, refresh their Browser on the other end of a GotoMeeting – a voila, it says “Price List”.   Side note: I once had a director of IT in a company quote me $125,000 just to add one text field to a legacy database.. hmmm that seems more out of whack now than it ever did… but back to the cloud… Here is a graphic to show this continuum, of which we speak.   Gliffyis a great little flow charting tool we use for doing database mapping, but its only that, and yes we do pay for it each month, it’s a SaaS, its super efficient, nothing to setup, just launch it through my Internet Browser and go to town.   Now QuickBase is smack in the middle, as one of the leading PaaS out there, we use it to build all kinds of tools to help ourselves and many of our customers share data, and work more productively – BUT you do have to set it up and for more complex, customized applications it can be pretty tricky and it does have limits to its ability to do everything - on the other hand it does have a ton of stuff pre-defined so its about 10X faster than writing it all from scratch using a .NET/SQL combo – whoa that’s way to techie sounding for my blog, so that’s the middle ground.   Lastly the Infrastructure at the bottom of the continum is totally flexible, so is space-time but you better have tons of money and the starship Enterprise to take advantage of that fact…. but if you do have tons of talent, money and time, you can build Ebay or Facebook or an ERP system to run GE..whatever, I think we all get the point.

So thats it, hope it helps someone put some things into their place… later I might try to bug my colleagues for some other good stuff to ramble on about.. like BPEL, BPM, and some other great acronyms.   RRRRR (that’s pirate for later dude)

 As a twenty year veteran of building and managing business processes accross a wide variety of roles in large base corporate America,  and now as a partner in MCF Technology Solutions, (www.mcftech.com), a company that helps others businesses use techology to transform themselves to thrive not just survive (yes that is a bit cliche – but hey corp speak is fun), I have a unique perspective on both the value, issues and the deployment of cloud based tools.    So yes, this blog may not always cover every technical detail of this revolution in technology but I will try to put these things into straight foward, logica terms, within a business context, that will be understandable by “business managers” everwhere… and by doing this I hope to help spread the gospel of cloud computing beyond the technology, which I truly believe, opens up to everyone the benfits of integrated information management to all, and to address concerns and myths alike so that we can all become a little more intelligent about this topic. 

So whats the PDM in the title, you may be asking?   It stands for Parallel Development Methodology, somthing that my partners and I have created as our proprietary method for rapidly and effectively defining, designing and deploying better processes while building the tools and technology that enable them, “In Parallel”. 

If this sounds interesting to you, stay tuned, interject your thoughts, experiences or ideas and join the cloud revolution.

Dr. PaaS